


secret agent man

by goshemily



Series: secret agent man [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Anal Sex, Angst, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Oral Sex, Undercover, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:31:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2113482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We need you to be married,” Lamarque says.</p><p>“<i>Pretend</i> to be married,” Fantine clarifies. “Or pretend to be boyfriends, that’s fine too.”</p><p>“It’s the living together that’s important.”</p><p>Grantaire swallows. “I beg your pardon?”</p><p>---</p><p>Or: the one where Enjolras and Grantaire are spies sent to a small village in the south of France to be undercover boyfriends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	secret agent man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barricadeur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barricadeur/gifts).



> This is a belated birthday present for the wonderful [barricadeur](http://archiveofourown.org/users/barricadeur). It’s based on an old email thread between Bari, [harborshore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore), and me - they were both really generous in letting me use their ideas in this fic. A million thanks also to [harborshore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore) for betaing, and to [Overnighter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter) and [miss_begonia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia). You are all _phenomenal_ , including at last-minute hand-holding. Seriously, this was made immeasurably better by your help, and I am so grateful. <3
> 
> Also everyone should know that [clenster](http://clenster.tumblr.com/) drew AMAZING art of Enjolras, and you can find it [here](http://clenster.tumblr.com/post/94543941271/in-soemilys-latest-fic-with-which-i-shamelessly). His face!!!
> 
> Please note that although the violence onscreen in the story is minimal, torture is implied.

“We need you to be married,” Lamarque says.

“ _Pretend_ to be married,” Fantine clarifies. “Or pretend to be boyfriends, that’s fine too.”

“It’s the living together that’s important.”

Grantaire swallows. “I beg your pardon?”

“We need two field agents who can pose together. Enjolras has already agreed.”

Grantaire is ambushed, outnumbered; they’ve cornered him because he sits in corners, they’re looking at him from the other end of the table in the small conference room and Enjolras stands in the doorway, Enjolras’s strong arms are crossed and he’s frowning –

“May I ask why?” Grantaire asks. He clenches his hands beneath the table.

Enjolras uncrosses his arms. “There’s a leak. Someone from Internal Intelligence is selling information, and he’s also linked to arms trafficking. Fantine’s asked for help from our department. We’re going undercover. Can you do it?”

 _Of course not_ , Grantaire wants to say.

“You’re needed. We don’t have another field agent in the department who’s able.”

“Grantaire,” Fantine says, “Combeferre recommended you. We asked him who he thought was the best match for Enjolras on this mission, and –”

“Don’t you mean you asked him first, and he politely declined in the absence of a working gun arm? You were forced to the sinister choice, and you shouldn’t take it; I’m no right hand for the golden boy.”

Enjolras comes inside the room now, and he looks taller than Grantaire’s ever felt. “There’s a reason he doesn’t have a working gun arm,” he says, and leans on the table, leans forward, looks right in Grantaire’s eyes. There’s no warmth in his face. “You owe it to him to do this.”

“I’d hate to have to make this an order,” Lamarque says. It almost sounds delicate.

Grantaire’s hands have started to go numb. “I’m not a field agent anymore. I tried again with Combeferre, and it didn’t work.” 

“You’ll go where I send you. Right now, that’s the village of Sainte-Jeanne, in le Midi. It’s nice in June. You’ll be fine.”

Lamarque leaves. Enjolras follows. Neither of them looks back.

“We all have to do things we don’t want to, sometimes,” Fantine says. “The trick is to remember why you’re doing it.” She stands too. “I didn’t think Thénardier was double-crossing me until recently, and even now I have no proof for the courts. Your office is the only one untainted by association; please help me.”

She goes out, and Grantaire is left alone to unclench his hands and to try to breathe evenly. He fails.

*

“I still don’t understand why you pushed for him,” Enjolras says.

Combeferre shrugs. “We’ll find out if I was right soon enough.”

Enjolras glares across the room. Grantaire’s bent at his desk, head in his hands, and Joly and Bossuet comfort him. “Field work is an honor,” he says. He knows he sounds stiff, but except for the botched operation with Combeferre, Grantaire’s done none since he was transferred to their office as a desk agent a year and a half ago. It’s hard to imagine he’ll care to contribute just because the mission is important.

“Grantaire’s no coward,” Combeferre says. “If he’s reluctant, it might not be from fear.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, if you two can’t be convincing.”

“Why couldn’t we call Bahorel home?” 

“From the Caucuses? Six weeks early? You know better.”

Enjolras sighs.

“All you have to do is get in, get evidence of what Thénardier is up to, and then you can get out again. Is that really so bad?”

“You mean besides the fact that I joined the _External_ Directorate so that I could protect my country without spying on her citizens, and now _Internal_ wants us to do their dirty work? You mean besides the fact that I’ll be working with _Grantaire_ , and he can’t even be bothered to file paperwork on time?”

Combeferre laughs. “Who else was Fantine supposed to ask? Thénardier already knows her agents, and if he’s bringing in weapons as well, it might be useful to have someone on the job who’s dealt with foreign smuggling before.”

Enjolras sighs again. Grantaire looks up, and Enjolras looks away. 

*

“You’d better have a backup plan, Enjolras, because convincing a bevy of villagers of our love is Herculean, and you’re built for a different myth. I’d suggest Ganymede, played by an Algerian instead of a Trojan –”

“Offense,” Feuilly says.

“To Algeria, Troy, or Enjolras?” Courfeyrac asks. “You never know, he might want the part of a compliant youth.” They both laugh.

Grantaire generally doesn’t mind department meetings, but when they come at the end of a long day and everyone is crowded into an overly warm room and Lamarque looks especially stern and Enjolras especially righteous, he would rather be anywhere else than preparing to play Enjolras’s boyfriend. He would rather be anywhere than watching him. Enjolras is leonine, dark, high cheekbones, green eyes; he is so beautiful that Grantaire cannot always look at him directly. The light sinks into his black hair and is returned, radiant, from his angry face. 

“To neither,” Grantaire says.

“I’d ask why you’re willing to do this, Grantaire,” Enjolras says, and his gesture encompasses the entirety of France’s spy network, “but I don’t think you even know. It can’t be the hazard pay when you willingly spend all your time behind your desk; tell me, do you even care if we catch Thénardier?”

Combeferre says, evenly directed to both of them, “You know, you’re going to have to sell the idea that you’re affectionate.”

“We are capable of pretending to smile,” Enjolras snaps.

“It’ll need more than that,” Courfeyrac says.

Grantaire’s rigid. This is not anything he wants; in that, at least, Enjolras is right. It’s nearly midnight and Enjolras is looking at him with contempt and this whole plan is idiotic, less practical than Lamarque has ever been, and Grantaire’s trigger finger itches and his palms sweat. If they can’t sell a relationship long-term, a reason to move together to the village Thénardier uses as his base, then... then, the mission will fail, Enjolras’s morals will be outraged, and a political storm will fall on Lamarque.

If Grantaire can’t sell a relationship _right now_ , Combeferre will probably volunteer to go back into the field, despite his wounded arm.

“Demonstrate,” says Lamarque.

Courfeyrac twitches, like he hadn’t expected that, like this is more than a performance.

“If we must,” Enjolras says, and walks toward Grantaire. “I won’t compromise the mission, Grantaire, not over something so facile – stop looking like that.”

Grantaire tries to smooth his face. He stands up.

Enjolras yanks Grantaire toward him, a rough hand Grantaire last felt on the practice mat, and surely Enjolras isn’t so much ‘acting’ as truly frustrated that he’s getting saddled with a man he can’t trust – and Grantaire catches himself, hands on Enjolras’s upper arms, fingers tightening, and looks up at him and says quietly, “I’m glad you’re home.” Then he _hugs_ Enjolras, isn’t sure what’s in him in this moment but madness and some kind of quicksilver challenge to Enjolras’s stoicism, steps in and holds him, tries to play calm and warm and open.

Grantaire rests his head on Enjolras’s shoulder for maybe the space of a full breath. When he draws back, he lets his hand trace down Enjolras’s arm like he can’t bear to stop touching him, and then he whirls, smiles at Lamarque at the head of the table and feels wicked laughter coming up inside of him, says, “We could go for a more _intimate_ demonstration, if you’d like.”

Lamarque just nods, inscrutable as always, and says, “I think we’ve seen enough.”

Grantaire’s shoulders drop a quarter of an inch. France might mean nothing to him right now, and fuck Lamarque for acting otherwise, but France holds his friends; he’d like to do well, although it’s unlikely. Courfeyrac watches him with worry.

Enjolras runs his hand over his face and opens a file on the table.

*

They move to Sainte-Jeanne three days later. The village is pretty, and it’s safe, and Enjolras watches curtains twitch as the moving van follows their car up the cobbled lane. They’re renting a small house on a quiet street – all of the streets here are quiet – just twenty yards from Thénardier’s home, and he’s going to work as an accountant at the headquarters of Thénardier’s hotel chain. The Internal Directorate was clever to recruit the man, years ago; who better than an innkeeper to know the flow of information? Too bad he’s gone and sold it on again, Enjolras thinks sourly.

Grantaire rattles in his seat. He rolls his window down, then up. His hands are restless.

“If you ask if we’re there yet, so help me –”

“I’d never.” Grantaire turns quickly and smiles. “You know I’d never do anything to aggravate you.” It’s a sweet smile.

Enjolras is reminded that before he got lazy, Grantaire was supposedly good in the field. He has a face for lying. 

Grantaire goes back to looking out the window. “There’s a cat,” he says, and waves.

Yesterday Bossuet had suggested they would be more convincing as a long-term couple if they adopted a rescue dog. Enjolras threw a pen at him. Grantaire had smiled into his coffee mug. “I like kittens more,” he said.

They pull up in front of the house; it’s completely charming, except for the dead geraniums in the window boxes and the dingyness of the once-white paint.

“Well,” Grantaire says, about to open the car door.

“Well.”

“For France?”

Enjolras startles.

Grantaire smiles again. “Come on. I know why you’re doing this. It’s hardly for the fun of the role.”

“For France,” Enjolras agrees. He makes an offering, an opening. “Surely she’ll appreciate I’m giving up my liberté.”

“Who would ever have thought it? Enjolras, advocating the ball and chain!”

“Our marital bed is adventurous, then?”

Grantaire laughs. “You’ll have to give me a ring to find out, and not _that_ kind of ring. I don’t break out the special toys for just anyone, _boyfriend_.” He opens the door.

Enjolras grins and gets out of the car. Grantaire’s a liability, but at least he’s a quick wit.

Enjolras directs the movers to leave all the boxes in the front hallway, and calls the office while he watches R heft his punching bag out of the back seat. His shirt rides up a little, baring the soft pale skin at the small of his back.

“Enjolras,” Courfeyrac answers, lazy and benign down the phone line, and Enjolras’s neck prickles. “Have you kissed him in front of the neighbors yet?”

“We just got here.”

“But I bet they’re watching you, hm?”

Enjolras looks across the street; an old woman is looking at him through the window with frank interest. “This isn’t some _vulgarity_ , Courfeyrac. This is a play.”

“A shadow play? Will you give them a show behind your curtains? I ordered them lacy, just for you.”

“He’d make voyeurs of us all,” Bossuet says in the background, as though regretful.

“Not that _you’d_ mind,” Courfeyrac says to him. “But in all honesty, Enjolras, do please remember that the honor of France is at stake. If you’re not going to boink Grantaire for the greater good, then I’m not really sure you deserve the medals Lamarque wants to give you.”

“The dicking Grantaire wants to give you, on the other hand –” Bossuet says, and the line goes dead.

*

Unpacking is an exercise in self-restraint. Grantaire does his utmost – which, even on a good day, is not very much, and today is not a good day – to refrain from riling Enjolras. They’re in this together, for better or for worse – definitely for worse – and he doesn’t want the experience to be more miserable than it must be, for either of them.

“But Joly,” he hisses down the line a few hours in, “it’s not like Enjolras makes it fucking _easy_.”

There is no one so upright as Enjolras, no one so quick to hold others to his standards and find them lacking. Stood in their bedroom meticulously sorting his socks, he’d watched with a disapproving air as Grantaire upended his duffle bag on the bed.

“No, but neither do you,” Joly says.

Grantaire’s hand clenches on the phone at the thought of Enjolras’s distaste when Grantaire had got to the bottom of his pile of things, and pulled lube and condoms from underneath his boxing gloves. Enjolras had raised one very cold eyebrow and turned away.

“Be strong and shine on, my cheerful starfruit,” Joly says bracingly, and Grantaire hangs up on him.

“Courfeyrac wanted you to have enough reading material,” he throws over his shoulder to Enjolras as he carries pots and pans into the kitchen. “I left the boxes in the living room.”

A beat, and the sound of a knife cutting through masking tape.

Then: “ _Romance novels_?”

There’s another beat, probably Enjolras digging his cell phone out of his indecent jeans.

Grantaire hangs a pot holder on a hook by the back door.

Then: “You were supposed to send me with _Kant_ , not –”

Grantaire puts a wooden spoon away in a drawer.

“No, you did not ‘mishear’ –”

Grantaire resolves to inaugurate his new credit card by ordering philosophy books online; anything in the name of domestic harmony.

* 

Grantaire’s tells are so obvious. Enjolras suggests setting up the listening center in the second bedroom; Grantaire frowns over their vanished privacy. Enjolras hefts boxes of equipment up the stairs; Grantaire resolutely looks elsewhere. Enjolras leans over Grantaire’s shoulder to adjust a radio dial; Grantaire flinches away.

It’s frustrating and mildly insulting. Enjolras knows Grantaire doesn’t want to work this job with him, can tell by the way Grantaire’s blue eyes skitter away from Enjolras’s face as Enjolras says “I think this antenna needs to go the other way,” but does he need to be so fucking transparent? If it were anyone else, Enjolras would demand he show some professional pride in at least _trying_ to sell their cover. As it’s Grantaire, he can only hope they don’t end up killed. It’s bad enough in the office, Grantaire theoretically analyzing data printouts but in reality regaling Joly with stories of his one night stands. Here in the field, inattention could mean death.

He’d thought for a moment in the car that maybe things would be all right between them, but now Grantaire’s scrubbing a hand across his face like he has to steel himself to be in this small close overwarm room, working side by side.

“What do you need from me?” Grantaire asks, lowering his hand and looking at Enjolras soberly. “How do we get through this” – a disconcerting moue – “intact?”

“You _would_ need to ask.” It’s out before Enjolras can stop himself, and he almost wishes he could take it back, but Grantaire’s face doesn’t even change.

“I hope you know that what happened with Combeferre was an accident,” he says. “I’m many things, occasionally a sloppy hand, but that’s with a canvas, or –”

“If you say ‘in bed’ –”

“No, there I’m a dab hand.” Grantaire grins. “Not when I daub, and I’ve no green thumb. But you can trust me with a gun, or instruments more sensitive.”

“Then how did he end up shot through the arm? Why weren’t you covering him?”

The grin vanishes. “I was covering him. I was trying, anyway.”

Enjolras moves the antenna minutely. “We need to do this well. We need success, Grantaire.”

“I know.”

He holds the headphones up to his ears; nothing. Thénardier’s house is two doors down across the street, yet they’re not able to hear anything. He twists a knob and looks over. Grantaire seems troubled. “ _Do_ you know? You say I can trust you, but on your field mission you got Combeferre hurt –”

“You know I’ve done others.” Grantaire’s voice is tight. “Do your homework, Enjolras.”

There’s a crackle of static, and then a voice comes through, tinny but clear. “We’ve got it,” he says. 

Grantaire nods, and hands Enjolras a notepad and a pen. Enjolras resolves to ask Courfeyrac to send Grantaire’s old files when he sends a new batch of books.

*

Grantaire walks lightly down the hall. Their house is old and the floors creak, and he doesn’t want any more background noise on the audio tapes than is necessary. They’re recording everything that goes on in Thénardier’s home, and when he pokes his head round the door he finds Enjolras listening intently. Grantaire smiles. “Do you want –”

Enjolras holds up an imperious hand. _Christ_. His fingers are so elegant. 

Grantaire wants to say _Do you know your knuckles are perfect, and I’ve gotten off before thinking about your strength_ but when Enjolras takes off the headphones and looks expectant, Grantaire only says, “I think it would be good to start showing ourselves around the village. Dinner?”

Enjolras nods, and five minutes later walking down the narrow street, he takes Grantaire’s hand in his and squeezes gently. He leans in as though to nuzzle Grantaire’s neck, and Grantaire’s breath hitches. Enjolras whispers, “Remember, you’re in love with me.”

At the bistro Grantaire suggests, Enjolras is equally direct. He asks the waiter if they can sit outside, and gestures affectionately for Grantaire to choose a seat facing the village square. He smiles widely at the young woman next to them, and compliments her bracelet. He orders wine for them both. He stretches his long legs in front of him. He is incandescent, the late afternoon light warming him into something approaching human, softening his face into what on someone else might be laugh lines, casting him almost as a Renoir if that dappled impressionism weren’t too sentimental for what he is.

When he kicks Grantaire under the table, Grantaire jumps.

“How do you think you’ll spend tomorrow?” Enjolras asks, voice warm.

Grantaire tries to pull himself together. “Wandering,” he says. “Getting to know the locals.”

“I wish you could come with me,” Enjolras says.

“Me, an accountant?” Grantaire throws his head back and laughs. “You’d have to spend all day fixing my mistakes. I’d bring down the whole department.”

Enjolras raises an eyebrow.

I might anyway, Grantaire thinks. “My father despaired of my mathematics, and he was right to.”

Enjolras leans forward, eyes intense. “You’re more than what he thought,” he says. Somehow his voice is husky.

Grantaire glances over Enjolras’s shoulder at the woman at the next table. She’s pretending not to listen, but it’s clear she’s riveted.

“How are you so good?” he asks, and takes Enjolras’s warm hand in his own. “You’re more than I deserve.”

“We’re stuck together, so we may as well muddle along,” Enjolras says, and smiles again.

*

It’s a long night spent studying their files on Thénardier, but Enjolras is well used to little sleep. When the alarm goes off at 6:00, he’s had three hours, and he’s ready to begin.

“Turn it off,” Grantaire mumbles into his pillow. He’s scrunched against the far side of the bed, limbs pulled in to his body.

Enjolras realizes he’s too spread out to be entirely polite, gathers himself, and hits the alarm. He’s not used to sleeping next to someone. “Up,” he says mercilessly, and goes to shower.

Grantaire’s snoring again by the time he comes out.

Enjolras yanks the blanket off of him, and pads downstairs.

The espresso’s already ground and on the stove. Enjolras knows he didn’t grind it before bed; Grantaire must have, rooting around and tidying the kitchen while Enjolras reviewed notes.

The thought stays with him throughout the day. It runs in circles in his head in what’s become a circumscribed life: small car trundling down small streets, small white men in the accounting office surprised to find a man of color their new hire, small chance to learn anything about Thénardier’s extra-legal income. He doesn’t know what was going through Grantaire’s mind, can’t picture what he was thinking as he ground the beans. 

Over lunch with his department Enjolras endures questions about how France compares to Algeria, explains that he has a boyfriend and not a wife, listens with a neutral face to oily admiration for Thénardier’s voracious business appetites, and reminds himself that rebuilding a socialist France means attacking systems of oppression at the source of their power rather than attacking these men with his fists. He has to remind himself forcefully. Several times.

He knows that sometimes swallowing his words is necessary. It still makes his hands clench, even while his face stays smooth.

By the time he arrives ‘home’ he’s in a towering mood, even as the image of the espresso pot remains. He walks up to the front door, and before he can take his keys out, his hand changes direction and he starts pulling the dead plants from the window boxes. He yanks them out, roots and all, dirt flying everywhere. He gets it on his pressed trousers. Dead flowers pile on the steps. There’s a visceral pleasure to ripping out the decay. He has no idea what he looks like.

The door opens, and Grantaire emerges slowly. “Honey,” he says, eyebrows raised, “was it a bad day at the office?”

“You can’t even imagine.”

“Come on in. Give me your coat.”

It’s entirely surreal. Grantaire ushers Enjolras in and helps him out of his coat. He walks Enjolras into the front room, from which they can watch Thénardier’s house easily, pushes him down onto the red settee, and gets him a glass of wine.

“This isn’t our usual playground,” he says. “Domestic threats are different from international, and when we’re threatening each other with domesticity, it’s even worse – you’re inside _my_ sphere of influence. It’s understandable if you need some time to adjust.”

“I thought it would be easy: get in, get out. But the people are so petty.”

“Shocking, that a businessman with a sideline in guns and state secrets would attract other money-grubbing capitalists.” Grantaire’s tone is wry.

Enjolras knows he’s being mocked, but he can’t help himself. He points out, “Racist, too. Probably homophobic.”

“Well, there’s nothing in our window boxes right now. You could show up the fleur de lis, plant some lily of the valley.”

It’s a tempting thought, and strangely soothing, to imagine gently tamping dirt over seeds. Still, “Just more geraniums, don’t you think? To fit in better.”

“Whatever you’d like,” Grantaire says. “Now, let me fill you in on the neighborhood.”

*

How has it become so easy, Grantaire wonders. For over a week now he’s spent his days seeing and being seen, wandering the village seemingly idle, in reality making contacts and spying on Thénardier. For over a week now he’s been woken by Enjolras leaving for the office, has clattered downstairs to find Enjolras’s mug in the kitchen sink, has puttered around their shared home, has spent the late afternoons cooking increasingly elaborate recipes for a dinner for two, has lain awake staring at the ceiling beside a sleeping Enjolras and listened to him breathe.

It’s not actually easy at all.

Yesterday, sweet white-haired inquisitive Madame Mabeuf from across the street had stopped Grantaire on a walk. “How long have you two been together?” she wanted to know, leant forward in an old-fashioned black dress.

“Two and a half years.” Grantaire let a smile color his voice.

“It’s so wonderful how in love the two of you are,” she said. “I can see most everything from my front window; I can tell your eyes still follow him when he leaves the room!” She shook a gnarled finger at Grantaire. “I can tell you two still have passion. An old woman knows.” 

An old woman, or the village busybody. Grantaire had ducked his head and grinned at her, thought sternly _Don’t give it away_ at himself, and gone on to buy bread.

They regularly pretend to have sex. With all the old village houses sprawled against and around each other, three different homes in the neighborhood have sightlines to their bedroom. Last night, Enjolras had pressed Grantaire up against the drawn curtains so they’d be silhouetted if anyone looked up from the street. He’d spent twenty minutes talking into Grantaire’s ear, outlining Thénardier’s different bank accounts. The whole time, he’d had one hand on Grantaire’s hip and the other braced over his head against the glass. 

Grantaire has never believed in a vengeful deity, only in vengeful priests, but he is now Tantalus, acting at drinking without ever being satisfied. He had no one to give the gods to feast on but himself, so his temerity must lie in offering himself as sacrifice – though he didn’t _offer_ , not truly; add cowardice to his sins.

It’s not that he thought he’d ever be held. It’s just that when he thinks of the empty years of an empty bed stretching before him, he’s tired. It’ll be how it is now: he’s small and his skin doesn’t fit well and he curls around himself in the dark. He’s tired, and even reciting the litany of things that won’t flee, he aches. He’ll have museums and concerts and the pity of friends. He tells himself it’s enough, but it’s not; the future is gapingly lonely.

After they’d played at fucking – barely a play, not with Grantaire half-hard and hiding it, not with Enjolras’s voice deep – Grantaire had ground the morning’s espresso while Enjolras sent a last message home to Paris. When Grantaire crawled into bed and was settling, back to Enjolras, Enjolras had reached over and sleepily patted him on the shoulder, his hand too heavy through Grantaire’s thin shirt, and said, “Thank you.”

*

They still haven’t so much as set eyes on Thénardier. The more time they spend in Sainte-Jeanne, the more they think his house is a secondary weapons cache, a storage dump for Thénardier’s goons. Though the man himself never appears, people come and go in the night, carrying bags and boxes. They’re overseen by Madame Thénardier, steely-eyed.

Madame Mabeuf confided in Grantaire that Thénardier has a large extended family, “And some of them not so well-off; he does his best to care for them, kind man. They come to his house in the evening for a meal and a change of clothes.”

The best place to hide is in plain sight, Enjolras knows.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Enjolras turns, and Grantaire’s diffidently leant back in his café chair, rolling his pastis glass between his fingers. It’s a Saturday, warm and pleasant. They’re on the square to be seen, to continue to work their way into the rhythms of village life.

Madame Thénardier is at the restaurant across the square, taking the sun with a foppish young man and her surly daughter.

“It’s pleasant here.”

Grantaire’s eyebrows climb.

“I can appreciate it.”

“No call for overturning the social order? You’ll leave the burghers to their business?”

Enjolras drums his fingers on the table. “My parents never had this,” he says, “and they never had the opportunity. They came from Algiers when Maman was pregnant with me, and it hasn’t been easy on them. But we can enjoy the sun as much as anyone.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not thinking about work right now.”

“Don’t tell me you are.”

It’s a sore point, leaving Grantaire to sleep curled against pale sheets in the morning, inky hair a dark shadow under the covers. It’s hard to see the effect of what he’s doing, hard not to see his job as insultingly easy, building friendships in the village while Enjolras spends all day with men who make his skin crawl. Frédéric isn’t so bad, but Laurent and Denis have told more immigrant jokes than any two men should know. 

Meanwhile, Grantaire ambles Sainte-Jeanne in the sun, speaking to whom he wishes.

“I’m watching Eponine watch us,” he says now, in an undertone. “Maybe you should smile.”

Enjolras gives him a fuck you laugh, head thrown back and mouth open, just for the pleasure of exceeding Grantaire’s expectations.

“Oh! Grantaire!” a voice says, and they turn to see an elegant woman approach. She’s dressed severely, but there’s a warm smile on her lined face.

“Madame Simplice, hello,” Grantaire says as she comes up to them.

“You must be the famous Enjolras,” she says, and holds out her hand.

Enjolras isn’t sure what makes him do it, but he takes and kisses it, a put-upon gallantry more intimate than kissing her cheek. “A pleasure,” he says.

She laughs deprecatingly. “I can see how you charmed R so readily.”

“Oh, he carries the balance of charm in this relationship.”

Grantaire scoffs.

“How did you meet?” she asks, as Grantaire pulls up a chair and gestures for her to join them. She must be someone of standing in the community, for Grantaire to put himself out like that.

They have a whole carefully laid out story, worked out in the early hours of the morning before they left Paris. It involves a bus stop and the rain and it’s very cute. 

But in this moment, Enjolras’s mind goes completely blank. He sits there silent, desperately trying to dredge up the final version, the one agreed on as evoking the fewest questions and the most smiles, and he’s sure that he’s blown their cover before it’s even begun.

Then Grantaire’s reaching across the table, taking Enjolras’s hand fondly, stroking his thumb once over Enjolras’s knuckles. He turns quickly to Simplice as though to hide his face from Enjolras, and says, “Oh, he’s just being shy for my sake – it’s terribly embarrassing. I had the biggest crush on him, it was _so_ obvious. We used to run in the same circles, and every time he’d go out, I’d be there, terrified of giving myself away but still desperately wanting his attention. I used to pick fights with him about the littlest things, just so we’d have a reason to talk. He must have thought I was some kind of lunatic.”

“I didn’t,” Enjolras protests, weakly. 

“That’s nice.” Grantaire squeezes Enjolras’s hand and shares a bright, knowing smile with Madame Simplice. “Anyway, one day we were driving our friends insane with our bickering, and I said, ‘If I have to listen to you be aggressively wrong about everything, then at least I want a drink while I do it.’” Grantaire beams. “And he fell for it. We went for a drink together, and that was our first date.”

Enjolras is speechless. All of that happened, but it wasn’t like that. They were arguing security policy in the office one evening, and when Joly threw them out for disrupting his mood, they continued the fight at the Corinthe around the corner. It was prickly and uncomfortable, no buffer between them, and it was never repeated again.

Madame Simplice eats it up, of course, though the sidelong look she gives Enjolras makes it clear she knows it wasn’t quite as simple as Grantaire claims – Grantaire who, to cap off his act, now raises Enjolras’s hand to his lips, looking him in the eyes the whole while. His performance shows up Enjolras’s greeting of Simplice for the sham it was: his lips are chapped and gentle, lingering, the gesture chaste and heated at the same time. 

*

It’s too hot.

The bedroom window is open and Grantaire is crouched low in a corner, a telephoto lens hidden by the curtain and the dark outside. 

“Do you think they’ll ever come?” he asks idly. He yawns.

“No,” Enjolras says. He’s lying on the bed pouring over Thénardier’s financial records and wearing only his underwear. Sweat gleams at his throat.

“I’m not sure why we need these pictures _now_ , why recognition is so paramount. They’re _henchmen_.”

“The people determine the character of the leader.” Enjolras sounds bored, done with Grantaire. “If anyone at home knows the go-betweens, we can better track where the guns are coming from.”

Grantaire’s not stupid. It’s just that he’d rather be anywhere than eight feet from an almost-naked Enjolras. He leans back against the wall, thunks his head for good measure.

He texts Joly. _help enjolras is in his underwear_

Joly responds almost immediately. _bossuet wants to know if it’s boxers-briefs. musichetta demands color._

_yes. tight. red. help._

His phone flashes twice in quick succession, just enough time for him to thunk his head again.

_hang in there little tomato_

_they are only sexculottes you can do this_

There’s a pause, and then _but i bet you wish he were sans culottes :)_

There has never been a more aggressive smiley face.

A car slowly trundles along their street, motor putt-putting. Grantaire rolls his head to the side and looks out at the soft glow of its headlights. It’s only the baker, on his way home at last. He keeps looking resolutely out the window, anything not to look at the outline of Enjolras’s cock, the bright red of the cloth against his skin, the plains and valleys of him. 

Grantaire supposes, idly and vaguely desperate, that it’s flattering Enjolras is so comfortable around him now – he’s comfortable, or maybe Grantaire’s just entirely inconsequential. Either way, it’s excruciating. He sets the camera down and he gets his hand around his ankle, draws it close to him, holds it tightly. The feeling of gripping bone is an anchor. It keeps him from doing something stupid, like reaching out to touch Enjolras. 

Misery’s an ache in Grantaire’s throat. He closes his eyes. He’s exhausted.

It’s a hard thing allowing the neighbors to coo over him while pretending to Enjolras that it’s all an act.

“Are you falling asleep?” Enjolras demands.

Grantaire grunts.

“Look at me.”

Grantaire does, helpless. Enjolras is leant forward off the bed and is peering at Grantaire. He’s all glorious hair and intent eyes and Grantaire feels pinned.

“For someone who seems to sleep so much, you look awfully tired.”

Grantaire fakes it mostly, too scared of nightmares to sleep easily. He’s gotten good at the deception, though he’s mildly surprised Enjolras doesn’t see right through it. He counts the steady rhythm of Enjolras’s breaths to stave off bad dreams, matches his exhales, listens to him snore, studies the cracks on the ceiling. Usually he falls asleep by the time Enjolras wakes up.

“You want to rest? I can wait up for the pictures, and look over my notes in the morning.” Concern makes him speak softly.

“No, no, don’t worry – I just need something to keep me awake.” Grantaire grins crooked; Enjolras _would_ offer, even though his days are longer by far.

“I Spy?”

Grantaire laughs.

“Twenty questions?”

“No, let’s do two truths and a lie.” It’s a selfish impulse, wanting to know more about Enjolras than he’d ever willingly give.

“All right.”

Grantaire sits up straighter and Enjolras scoots closer and mirrors him, crossed legs and perfect posture, only six feet away now for all that sat on the bed like that he’s raised above Grantaire. 

“I’ll go first,” Enjolras says. “My grandfather fought against Algerian independence, my favorite painting is _Liberty Leading the People_ , and I haven’t had sex in three months.”

“Too easy,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras’s eyes gleam. “You hate _Liberty Leading the People_.”

“I don’t like revolution needing inhuman allegory to save it from its own strength. Besides, Delacroix was practically an Orleanist.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire shifts. 

“Your turn.”

“Did your grandpa really fight for the French?”

“One of them was a Harki, and he did. The other was killed fighting for the FLN, and he died before my mother was born.”

“That must have been hard on your grandma.”

“She saw action too,” Enjolras says. He sits up even straighter. “Mostly, though, she served as a spy.”

Grantaire tilts his head back and looks up. The ceiling cracks are different from this angle. “I’ve been drinking with Yo-Yo Ma, I’ve never been in love, and I haven’t had sex in three weeks.”

“The obvious answer is Yo-Yo Ma.”

“Is it?”

“So I can’t pick it.”

Grantaire glances at Enjolras out of the corner of his eye. He’s looking thoughtful and attentive. 

“But I do want to hear the story.”

“Once upon a time, I used to play the cello. I was decent. That’s it.”

“Were you good enough that you could be a teacher? Like, to Thénardier’s kids?”

“No.”

“You were good enough to meet Yo-Yo Ma, but not to be a teacher in a provincial village?”

Grantaire grips his ankle tighter. “I won’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t work. None of them take any music classes, and even _you_ couldn’t persuade Madame to make them try.”

Enjolras flops backward on the bed and sighs. “Fine. The lie is that you’ve never been in love.”

Grantaire lifts his hand from his ankle one finger at a time and uncoils slowly, stretching his legs out. “How do you know it wasn’t the other?”

“You brag about your exploits enough that I’d be surprised if anyone in the office doesn’t know the frequency of your conquests.”

“I’m flattered that you think I’m telling the truth.”

“I don’t usually, you’re completely ridiculous, but I remember that when we had our last planning meaning, you had a bruise on your neck. I thought it would give us verisimilitude.” Enjolras picks his papers up and holds them close to his face, squinting in the poor light.

“It helps with the sleeping,” Grantaire says, voice sour and petulant to his own ears.

“Yes, and that’s another question.” Enjolras puts his papers aside and sits up again. “Why do you pretend to be asleep when it’s obvious you never are when I turn out the light?”

“What?” Grantaire’s heart rate triples.

“You can read, or whatever, if you need. I won’t mind the light on longer; goodness knows that with the way you sleep in, it must be hard to fall asleep when I do.”

“Oh. Okay.” Grantaire fiddles with the camera.

“But come to bed, Grantaire. You’re not going to get any pictures tonight, and you really do look like you need it.”

Grantaire caps and uncaps the lens. “I thought you just said I sleep too late.”

“Yes, but more might help your jumpiness. We can’t have the village thinking there’s anything wrong with our bliss.” There’s a smile in Enjolras’s tone, a superiority in how he’s holding his head as he looks at Grantaire.

Grantaire has a brief moment of hating him passionately, and then he stands and undoes his belt. His body carries loneliness in every part, running under his skin but right at the surface. His hands feel heavy as he takes off his jeans.

Enjolras shimmies under the thin sheet, still clutching his notes. It’s the only blanket they can bear in this weather, and the way it settles on his body hides nothing.

They’re in Sainte-Jeanne to fill their days with casual affection and endearments, Grantaire’s shameful domestic fantasy and also his worst fear. Courfeyrac’s sympathetic in his earpiece and Joly’s a rock, but it’s _awful_. They touch during the day, they joke and tease in front of these people about how they met, they hold hands. Then they go ‘home,’ as though they live shared lives rather than just lives together, and there’s only distance.

Grantaire lifts his side of the sheet and slides in.

“Tell me another true thing,” Enjolras says. He turns over a page.

Grantaire closes his eyes. “I’ve got an addictive personality,” he says finally.

Eventually Enjolras turns off the light.

*

“We need to meet Thénardier today. We need to make _some_ progress.”

It’s been three weeks and they’re still nowhere. Enjolras carries his frustration wound tight in his shoulders. He’s spinning in place waiting for something to happen, an utter waste of time and resources.

All they have are the men who visit Thénardier’s house late at night, whom Feuilly’s identified as low-level traffickers. Gueulemer, Babet, Brujon, Montparnasse. They could be picked up on outstanding warrants, but then Thénardier would go to ground like the ferret he is. Enjolras’s lip curls. There’s not even anything suspicious in his books, the only discrepancy the payments made by Internal Intelligence for whatever services such a man can render.

Were Fantine not so certain Thénardier was the leak, had she not insisted he was one of the few who had known the information sold, Enjolras would question the entire mission. He chafes already, and that’s without the lack of evidence of secrets told or guns missing; they’re working toward a common goal, but Grantaire grates. The department is full of competent desk agents, but though Grantaire has filled both roles, he excels at neither.

Enjolras taps his foot impatiently. They should have left twenty minutes ago, but Grantaire’s still upstairs getting ready. It’s 21 June, and the Fête de la Musique is being celebrated all over France and all over Europe. Paris will be filled with people stopping to hear strange choirs on ill-lit corners or opera in the sunny park. It’s a day for a picnic with friends, not for trying to trap a weasel.

Grantaire finally emerges from the bedroom and comes tripping down the stairs. Enjolras blinks. His soft grey shirt is askew, the low neck pulled and exposing his left collarbone.

“Ready?” he asks brightly.

“I’ve _been_ ready,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire’s face twists.

Outside, the village is full and happy. The weather is pleasantly cool for a change. Music’s everywhere. They walk toward the square, and Grantaire hums something catchy. His smile’s back.

“I wish we were home,” he says abruptly just before they get there.

“What would you be doing, if we were?”

“I’d be spread out on a picnic blanket, letting Musichetta feed me grapes,” he says, and Enjolras has a sudden vision of Grantaire languid with his dark head resting in Musichetta’s lap, mouth open.

“Where would Joly and Bossuet be?” he wants to know.

“Standing. Joly’d be on sax and Bossuet’d have his tambourine. That was their plan for today, anyway.” They have hot pink sunglasses and formal leisure suits for whenever their experimental jazz duo performs. It’s really something to see, and hear.

“Look,” Enjolras says. 

In the square, there’s a string quartet playing Vivaldi by the fountain, and the Thénardiers are sat at the café beyond. Simplice is at the next table.

“I asked her to meet us here,” Grantaire says.

They wend their way through the crowd and Simplice greets them gravely, though there’s a twinkle in her eye.

As Grantaire signals for wine, she says, “I think you may know Monsieur Thénardier, Enjolras?”

“No,” he says, “I haven’t had the pleasure, although I work for you, sir.”

The man is adept at preserving capitalist hierarchies. His employees largely fear him, and though his office is only a floor above the accounting department, no one’s ever suggested introducing Enjolras.

They all shake hands, Madame’s grip as forbidding as her husband’s is laconic.

“What do you do?” she asks Grantaire.

“I’m an artist,” he says, almost rueful. His charm’s turned all the way up.

“No honest business for you,” Thénardier laughs. His gestures are expansive, and the waiter has to edge around him to bring their wine.

“Oh, my father was an accountant, so this was a way to disappoint him,” R says airily, and lifts his glass in a toast. “Enjolras is the breadwinner in the relationship.”

“Does it take much to support him, then?” Thénardier asks Enjolras, friendly and joking. He’s appealing like a cockroach is appealing. When the rest of the world’s gone to hell, he’ll still be scuttling for profit. Enjolras has learned that much from his account books, at least.

“Not so much, no; we’ve had difficulties in the past, same as anyone, but since coming here, everything’s been good. I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”

“Difficulties?” Madame is all wide eyes, a concerned hand at her breast. “Nothing serious, I hope?” 

Enjolras thinks of what Grantaire said about himself last night. He thinks of Grantaire coming into work caustic and moving stiffly, joking about his nights out. “Not at all,” he says lightly.

Later, as the light is fading and Grantaire is pressed into Enjolras over-warm, they invite the whole party home for another glass of wine. “It’s on your way, after all,” Grantaire says to the Thénardiers.

“I’d never say no to free wine,” Thénardier says, and Enjolras restrains himself from asking about the man’s year-end bonus.

They stop on the way to listen to an a cappella group sing American pop songs in the street. Grantaire’s had more to drink than anyone else, and he’s moving loose-limbed. He props himself against the stone building behind them as they watch, and Enjolras pulls him in close.

“Let me sleep here until I die,” Grantaire murmurs into his shoulder, mild and sweet-smelling.

“How are you doing there, old man?” Thénardier asks, and Grantaire turns too swiftly toward him, stumbles a little. Thénardier catches him and passes him back to Enjolras with an understanding look.

“Maybe some water when we get home?” Enjolras asks, voice tight. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Thénardier says. “We’ve all been there.”

“I’m fine, really,” Grantaire protests, and his voice is almost bewildered, his words carefully annunciated.

They keep moving, and eventually Enjolras is ushering Simplice and the Thénardiers through the house to the small backyard. “You must come in, absolutely,” Grantaire had said to them, all over-exaggerated formality. Enjolras grits his teeth, and stays in the kitchen getting out glasses.

“Quick,” Grantaire says urgently, the second they’re alone, “I’ve got his phone, have you got a chip?” He’s as sober as Enjolras has ever seen him.

Enjolras pulls one from the knife drawer and doesn’t say _I thought you were drunk_. He’s fitting the chip into the phone when they hear the back door open.

He acts without thought. He shoves Grantaire against the wall and gets his arms around him, one hand in his hair and the other groping at his back pocket to hide the phone.

Grantaire’s mouth opens easily.

Everything he does is easy; his breath hitches like he’s surprised, but not like he’s unwilling. Enjolras tries to be scrupulously honest with himself, even exacting, and as he listens to footsteps pause in the hall, he thinks about how Grantaire is so much better at this game than expected. He’s easy in his glances, his touches, his smiles. If Enjolras is truly honest – he licks across Grantaire’s teeth, and Grantaire rocks up against him, and Thénardier comes into the room, an awareness at the back of Enjolras’s neck – he’s better at the charade than Enjolras.

This is their first kiss.

Thénardier coughs politely.

“Oh,” Enjolras says, and turns around. His lip is sore where Grantaire’s bit it. “Um. I’m sorry. We’ll be right out. Grantaire, can you get a bottle?”

Grantaire ducks out while Enjolras stammers more apologies, just for good measure.

“I thought I’d come offer to help,” Thénardier says.

Grantaire sidles around him back into the kitchen, nimble fingers dropping Thénardier’s phone into his coat pocket unnoticed. Now that it’s bugged, they’ll be able to hear every conversation he has. “Red or white? I wasn’t sure, so I brought both. Or something herbal? It _is_ the summer solstice, after all.”

“I’m not drinking absinthe with my boss,” Enjolras mutters, trying for embarrassed and almost hitting it. Mostly he’s annoyed that Grantaire’s acting is better than he thought.

“Are you a pagan, Grantaire?” Thénardier asks.

“No,” Grantaire says, all big blue eyes. “Ange here is more than enough for _my_ faith.”

Thénardier takes glasses from the counter. “I’ll just take these outside, shall I?” he says, winking lewdly.

Enjolras listens to the door close behind him, and raises his eyebrows at Grantaire. “Well?”

“Just give me a minute,” R says quietly, leaning against the wall. His hands flex at his sides. “It’s not easy.” But he must be all right. The slope of his shoulders is quotidian.

“It’s not supposed to be easy, but it’s what we’re trained for.”

“It’s harder when it’s you,” Grantaire says.

That’s not fair, and although in the realm of things that are not fair in Enjolras’s life it falls low in importance, it still stings. “Get yourself together,” he snaps, and grabs Grantaire’s hand. “See?” He holds their hands up, clasped like a promise. “Now smile.”

He takes a bottle and walks outside, pulling Grantaire along behind him. He tightens his grip and doesn’t look back.

*

Grantaire wraps his hand around his cock and leans his head against the wall. He’s so angry at this whole fruitlessly stupid situation, and the tepid shower water is doing nothing to help. It’s so hot out that even running only the cold tap does nothing.

He twists his wrist and presses his cheek into the tile.

Enjolras is out back gardening, wearing old faded Levi’s that he’d hacked the legs from just above the knee, that he’d shrugged about to Grantaire’s disbelieving stare – “It’s hot,” he said, and changed into them right there, careless of Grantaire watching – that he’s worn for the last few days as though the strength of his calves isn’t almost obscene.

Grantaire wants to kneel in the dirt of the flower bed Enjolras is working in and bite at the meat of his thigh.

He wants to worship him.

He wants to scream.

Instead, he rubs his cheek on the cool stone and gives in, lets his vices take him over again, calls up the shame in his stomach as he jerks himself off viciously fast. He’s always been profligate; why not revel in it, now that he knows what Enjolras looks like in bed, now that he doesn’t have to guess?

He slams a fist against the wall. His breath hitches, because _Enjolras_ , Enjolras so close every night that Grantaire could touch him, so close that Grantaire could easily slide over and swallow his cock, and that part wouldn’t be easy, not given the bulge when Enjolras lay half-naked on their bed, but Grantaire would love the challenge. He loves sucking cock, and he’s imagined a hundred times how Enjolras would taste, but now when he imagines it he can imagine what Enjolras would look like after, soft at the edges, and what he’d look like during, a sheen to his skin.

Grantaire’s arching into his own hand, picturing it, Enjolras sitting on the edge of their bed and Grantaire looking up at him. Enjolras might reach out and run a hand through his hair, might tell him what he likes, might pull his hair, might let Grantaire give him this.

He’s almost gasping to breathe in the thick damp air.

Yesterday after his shower he’d forgotten a change of clothes, and had to rummage in his drawers in only a towel. Enjolras had sat on the bed staring at him, disapproving of, what, his lack of foresight? He wouldn’t look Grantaire in the eyes.

Grantaire moves faster, vicious.

He bites his lip when he comes.

It didn’t even draw blood, he thinks, and meanwhile Enjolras is living with him unsuspecting.

He _hopes_ Enjolras is unsuspecting.

Grantaire is out of his depth at every moment, even just getting out of the shower. He wipes fog off the mirror and checks: his face gives everything away. 

True masochist, he gets dressed, checks the tape logs, and goes outside.

Enjolras is absolutely fucking ridiculous. It’s the hottest day yet and he’s doing stress relief, pulling out plants. He’s wearing a hideous sun hat because he doesn’t care what people think, because he doesn’t care what he looks like.

Grantaire didn’t even know Enjolras owned jeans until three days ago, but these are the kind of worn-out that sit just low enough on his hips, and they show off the length of his legs, and his perfect ass, and his skin is practically glowing golden, and Grantaire pretends that all he wants is to fuck him, that it isn’t worth this whole miserable experience just to get to know that Enjolras is particularly kind when he’s tired, that playing at happy for the village isn’t worth being near Enjolras and watching him believe.

Enjolras has installed trellises and raised vegetable beds, bringing order here, an obverse to the chaos he creates.

“Why do you like gardening so much?” Grantaire asked him last night.

“It doesn’t hurt to have neighbors thinking I’m a homebody,” Enjolras said. “Besides,” and he’d smiled, something real and new, “I’ve found that I like it. It clears my head.”

Now he turns around, wipes a hand across his handsome face. There’s sweat beading above his upper lip. “Grantaire? Is there any news?”

“No,” Grantaire says. They’re getting duplicates of every text Thénardier sends and receives, and they’re starting to put together what they think is the code he uses. Marius is the best at it, but they’ve all done their share.

“In that case, would you mind bringing me something to drink?”

Grantaire goes right back through their pretty blue door and finds him some lemonade. Grantaire made it yesterday, juicing lemons while they talked about the case. The grocer had given him a bag from her own tree. “I never sell them in the summer,” she’d told him, a wide smile on her face, “not when it’s less trouble to just give my own away. Otherwise they’d rot on the ground, I have so many. Make some lemonade, something sweet for that sweet man of yours.”

When Grantaire had asked, pulling the sugar down from the cupboard, Enjolras said he liked his lemonade tart, and didn’t it seem odd that Madame Thénardier kept texting about buying knitting needles when it wasn’t the season for scarves?

“She’s a regular Madame Defarge,” Grantaire said.

Enjolras had laughed, and Grantaire was almost proud.

He brings Enjolras a tall glass of lemonade, and tries not to think about how Enjolras looks, bent over what he says is going to be an herbaceous border in the fall.

“We won’t be here in the fall,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras blinks as he takes the glass. “Jehan thinks that when it gets cooler, we should plant bergamot. He wants us to make our own tea.”

“We won’t be here,” Grantaire says again.

Enjolras looks at his trowel. “I know.”

After that, Grantaire has to spend an hour in the cellar with his punching bag.

*

Enjolras takes to watching Grantaire in tiny moments. He’s disconcerted, but he’s fascinated, too: Grantaire is so much better at this than Enjolras expected.

He finds himself replaying Grantaire’s mannerisms during mind-numbing meetings, the way he smiles brightly to explain how they got together, the way he always watches Enjolras from underneath his eyelashes. It’s very convincing. 

He’s an exceptional fake boyfriend, probably better, Enjolras thinks uncharitably, than he is in real life. R cooks every night, an easy segue from how he’s often thrown parties at his flat, fed everyone who turned up, quirked his head at Enjolras every time, surprised to see him coming in behind Courfeyrac, and then added another courgette to his ratatouille.

It seems to comfort him to do tangible things for people, keeps him locked in the moment. He’s less jittery when he’s working with his hands. Enjolras wonders if that’s part of trying to focus, if he’s trying to leave his vices behind.

Grantaire is unexpected. In the grocery store he’s perfectly natural when Enjolras comes with, consulting him and teasing him in equal measure (“But _do_ you know your varieties of brie, Enjolras, do you really?”), and always aware of their surroundings. He pulls Enjolras in close, kissing his temple – Enjolras’s eyes flutter shut, completely without his meaning them to – and his lips linger. He whispers, “Surveillance target, eleven o’clock. Fifty feet away, by the cantaloupe.”

The grocer smiles at them as they leave, trailing one of Thénardier’s lieutenants.

Grantaire nods to the grocer, something wrong with his face. “This never happened when I went shopping in Lyon with Bahorel,” he says.

“What never happened?”

“Being paid attention by the local busybodies.”

“Lyon’s hardly a small town, though.”

It’s been hard to get information on Grantaire’s prior cases, either before he gave up field work or when he tried to return to it with Combeferre. Courfeyrac promises Enjolras he’s still searching for old files (“Although frankly this feels more than a little underhanded, Enjolras.” “I just want to _understand_ him; we need to be successful here.”), but he can’t turn anything up on the job with Combeferre.

Combeferre himself is hardly any more help. He was, after all, knocked out for most of the firefight. (“Shot while unconscious!” Courfeyrac said down the line, gleeful as though Enjolras doesn’t remember his drawn face at the hospital. “Now _that’s_ embarrassing, why don’t you get frustrated at _him_ instead of me?”)

Thénardier invites them over when he gives a dinner party for his wife’s birthday, and Enjolras is forced to admit that the man puts on a good show. “Maybe he really doesn’t run weapons out of here? Maybe Madame Mabeuf is actually right?”

“No,” Grantaire pants, and hoists himself up using Enjolras’s shoulders, “there’s way too much security for a man simply protecting his family.”

They’re locked in Thénardier’s upstairs bathroom, pretending to have sex while Grantaire tries to get into the ventilation duct above the shower.

“ _Oh_ , Enjolras, _oh_ , I need you,” he moans, as he reaches down for a screwdriver from where he’s wedged above the shower door.

Enjolras hands it up to him and grimaces. It’s hard to hear R moan in jest when he knows what he sounds like in truth. Their bathroom does not have as thin walls as, he suspects, either of them would like. Grantaire’s not overly loud, but the noises he makes are unmistakable.

“ _Yes_ , Enjolras, just like that!” he shouts now.

Enjolras watches Grantaire’s legs disappear and can hardly begrudge him the relief of a hand on himself, not when he’s coming to realize how much Grantaire relies on touch to keep himself sane. He’s beginning to suspect Grantaire is desperate for the kind of conquest he’d bragged of so readily in Paris, something to keep him from lying awake long into the night and flinching away from the lightest contact with Enjolras.

It’s one thing to knead dough in the kitchen; that’s one kind of grounding action. It’s another to need something more human. What happens, Enjolras wonders, if Grantaire doesn’t find it?

“You must understand, Enjolras, that most of us need some kind of touch,” Bossuet had said privately to him the night before the move to Sainte-Jeanne.

“I’m not exactly celibate, Bossuet. I know what people need.”

“No, but,” this said earnestly, though Bossuet sprawled against the doorframe casually, “I think you’re more likely to be able to concentrate on the job than Grantaire is. I love him like a brother, but I think you should know he’s going to be strange around you for a few weeks. Around your body.”

“My body? What do you mean?”

“Well, soon enough you’ll have a _body_ of evidence, won’t you? You’ll see.”

Enjolras had groaned then at the pun; he groans now, for show.

Suddenly, R’s head pops out of the duct, and the rest of him follows. “We’re good!” he says, tumbling down and narrowly avoiding falling on his head or being caught by Enjolras. “You were right; the texts _were_ a code, and there were documents hidden above the chandelier in the bedroom. I’ve got pictures.”

Enjolras grins at him. Grantaire’s competence is almost shocking in light of his removal from active field work, and he’s putting on a performance that could fool Enjolras himself if he didn’t know better. The only question is how to keep Grantaire on this path, and not return him to the uncaring debauchee he was when they met.

“Don’t you worry you’ll get fired?” Grantaire asks, one hand on the doorknob, the other raking a hand through his hair so it looks properly disheveled.

“Hardly. Thénardier thinks it proves to clientele that he’s open-minded, to keep a _gay_ libertine on staff.”

“He gives license to licentiousness, then?”

“The only thing that shocks his bourgeois sensibility is socialism.”

Grantaire flashes a grin of his own, and is out the door almost before Enjolras gets a good look at the deep shadows under his eyes.

Really, he’s going to have to figure out something to do to help Grantaire. _Something_. R’s spending more and more time with his punching bag, and even with all that exercise, he barely sleeps.

By turns he’s sullen and combative and sweet. Enjolras hardly knows what to make of it, except that when they sit together in the village square, the hard carve of Grantaire’s head pressed into Enjolras’s shoulder, Enjolras’s arm around him, R holds himself still. 

*

Grantaire wakes before dawn from a nightmare, and finds his traitor hands have curled themselves into Enjolras’s shirt. Enjolras is softly snoring, pressed close. Their bodies are nearer in sleep than they ever willingly are awake.

Grantaire should have better control of himself than this. Guilt is hot in his stomach, and he eases his hands open carefully and rolls himself away. He’s leaking truth all over the job, and sooner or later Enjolras is bound to notice. Weekends are worst because Grantaire has no respite, no chance to check himself because Enjolras is never gone.

Another day, another chance to be a self-pitying sad bastard, he thinks, and goes down to the parlor to read.

Loneliness is a physical thing. It’s the roil in his stomach, it’s the flight of stairs he’s put between himself and Enjolras now, it’s how sometimes he carries himself loud enough that he’s sure everyone can tell he’s begging to be noticed. Grantaire’s under no illusions about what an asshole he is. He’s never been good at lying to himself.

Being in the field again means a low level of terror drawn in with every breath. It’s been over a month, and he’s learned that the trick to acting whole is in walking like his skin isn’t made of hot coals.

Grantaire makes it through half an Anouilh collection before Enjolras comes down looking soft and rumpled. It’s already 11:00, and he’s never seemed more human.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“No reason to; there’s nothing we could be doing right now.” Grantaire turns a page.

“There’s always something to do.” He sounds chiding, but gently, a rebuke without thorns. He yawns.

It’s worse than when they fight with intent.

“There are still circles under your eyes,” Enjolras says, peering at him bleary and disappointed.

It’s too much to take, his concern and his red pajama pants, washed many times and frayed at the bottom. He can’t be nice to Grantaire; it leaves them both vulnerable. Grantaire’s fear is pricking, and self-preservation kicks in.

“It’s the heart of summer, you know.” Grantaire stands, the better to gesture and deflect. “A June _Sun_ day. We could be lying outside in a meadow and breathing in the sweet smell of fresh hay and sun and skin and sin, as the day commands (a dichotomy the Church encourages, as you’re aware), and instead we’re lying to these good people – who, to be sure, enjoy the lie. And I’m surprised that you’d even have a lie-in, Enjolras, I’d not take you for a layabout, though I equally suspect these fine villagers wouldn’t mind lying with you, which is to say _rolling_ in the aforementioned hay –”

“Grantaire, that’s enough.” Enjolras has opened his eyes truly now. “Don’t be crude.”

“Don’t be crude, he says, when I’m more scatological than the fracking you so despise! Wait until you see what’s underneath _my_ surface, Enjolras.”

“Why are you like this?” Enjolras hardly even looks surprised.

“Why aren’t you?”

“I know you care about the environment.”

“Only insofar as I live in it, and we bequeath it. Hostages to fortune, that’s the generation we’re raising, and God only a poor man. No one’s going to pay their way.”

“ _You_ certainly won’t.” He’s beginning to get angry now.

There’s elemental satisfaction to this. Grantaire grins like a cat. “Ah, there it is. I’d been waiting.”

“You believe in none of this.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, and you know it. _You_ were the one who brought up children!” Enjolras is leaning closer, fully awake, and that’s dangerous too.

“It will come all right in the end, if by ‘all right’ you mean that the pendulum of history is inexorable: no march toward progress, but everything repeated in its time. Don’t think of the children; they’re in stasis. They’ve never been safe, not once.” Grantaire feels vaguely sick, but he can’t stop. No self-control at all, not him. He takes a step toward Enjolras, and holds out his book. “Anouilh tells us that beauty is unlike the plaintive ugly world in that it doesn’t lead us to doubt God, which may be true enough in that if you take me – and oh, take me, Enjolras –” he smiles sour and justified at Enjolras’s recoil, “– you’re more likely to be certain of the devil. But ugliness at least has little pretense; beauty is no guarantor of truth. We think it beautiful to see a butterfly alight on a rose, but that’s a dishonest act. As a caterpillar, it would eat it. Call Combeferre, and he’ll confirm: entomology is the true revolution. Worms will eat us all, and equally.”

Enjolras is equilibrium again, too used to Grantaire to be off-center long. “If you’re going to bring Shakespeare into it, I’d like to point out that Combeferre was hurt under _your_ arm.”

“Is that meant to disarm me?”

“No; only to point out you’ve disarmed _him_.”

There’s a pause. Then Grantaire whoops, incredulous. Enjolras almost grins. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” Grantaire says, and doesn’t step back. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Yes. We started the morning on the wrong foot.”

“I’d be mourning for the morning, but I don’t feel defeated by it.”

“Ready to stand tall?”

“Am I ever?”

This time Enjolras gives him a real smile. It’s a devastating weapon. “I think so. I was thinking breakfast, and then a walk through the village together, see what there is to see?”

He can’t. Enjolras is so bright and so tangible standing in the doorway, and it would be so easy to sink into the fantasy. Grantaire is too large inside his skin like this, something putrid ready to burst. “Enjolras, I need some time alone. To unwind.”

“So go for a walk yourself, then.”

“No.” Grantaire pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to swallow the mounting certainty that he’s giving everything away. “I need to find someone. Clear my head of all this.”

“You _can’t_ think that’s wise.”

“What’s wisdom to a drowning man?”

“Probably what kept him from diving in without knowing how to swim.”

“You judge us by your example,” Grantaire says, “and no man could stand to that.”

“Oh, don’t pretend I’m on a pedestal so you’re off the hook –”

“Then don’t pretend you don’t like being on a pedestal!”

“I _don’t_. There are better men by far than me, and I know it. I know _them_. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly though he’d not have me say it. Better _women_ ; Fantine.”

“Well, at least you have the grace to spare me a place on the list. We both know it would be a lie.” He pauses, then with every bit of resolve he can find: “I’m going out. I can’t stand this anymore.”

Enjolras stops him with a sudden hand on his arm. 

Grantaire looks down at Enjolras’s fingers, gripped tight enough that Grantaire’s skin will be red when Enjolras lifts his hand, and he resists the childish urge to flex his bicep. 

“You can’t go out. Not for this.” 

“Aw, honey, you never let me have any fun.” Deflect, deflect. Grantaire remembers Enjolras’s face when he’d come upon R making out with a friend from Appropriations on the sidewalk outside the office months ago, his pursed lips and the way he’d looked them up and down, contemptuous. The man had squeezed Grantaire’s ass while they both stared at Enjolras. He’d flushed high on his perfect cheekbones and stalked inside.

“Do you think this village would encourage infidelity? Between _us_?” 

“Come with me – it’s not infidelity if you watch.” Grantaire is losing his mind standing here looking at the pulse jumping at Enjolras’s throat, but he’s never been able to resist a good opening. It’s one of his worst qualities.

Enjolras’s fingers tighten more. “Just use me.” 

“ _What_?”

“You obviously need an outlet to stay focused; in Paris you never stopped talking about how much sex you have, and I’ve been watching you fall apart for the past month without it.” Enjolras’s voice is clipped and his eyes rake Grantaire’s face, angry and hard. “You clearly need someone. I refuse to compromise the mission, and I’m stuck with you as a partner. _Use me_.”

Grantaire rocks back. He holds himself still, taut, counts to ten and breathes slowly through his nose. He unclenches his fist. Look at that, he’s grown as a person. “I won’t forget that you said that, we both know me well enough,” and he bares his teeth pleasantly, “but let’s move on.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re insulting.”

Enjolras inhales sharply. “Grantaire. You were _shaking_ last night. You’re... whatever you are this morning. If it’s stress about being in the field, if you need grounding, let me help. This is about more than us. We need to succeed. I’ll do anything.”

Grantaire throws Enjolras’s hand off. “I suppose it’s commendable,” he manages, skin on fire, “that you care about your fellow agents’ mental health. What, did you learn it in a course somewhere?” That’s unfair, and there’s a sick twist to his gut even as he’s saying it, even as he’s so angry. He knows how much Enjolras cares, how he’ll do anything to keep them safe. “You, the perfect soldier, would _deign_ to honor me –”

“I’m only trying to help –”

Grantaire steps back and raises his hand so Enjolras can see. “Look at that. Shaking again. Maybe you want to hold it for me?” He turns and walks down the hallway. He can’t lower his shoulders.

“Where are you going? Grantaire, you _can’t leave_.” Enjolras is as disdainful as ever.

Grantaire doesn’t look back. “I won’t, not if it means so much to _the mission_. I’m going to beat the shit out of the punching bag so I don’t do it to _you_.” 

*

Enjolras watches him go. This is an unexpected conclusion.

He’s angry, mostly at himself for breaching lines he didn’t know Grantaire had, and he’s ashamed of misreading a colleague so badly. He is not ashamed of the offer; that was right to give.

But it’s a dangerous thing to set Grantaire off. He’s unpredictable when he’s truly upset, and could just as easily decide to fuck off and fuck someone to spite Enjolras as decide to stay in the cellar and work his frustration out in a professional manner.

Enjolras sits at the kitchen table with a croissant and homemade jam, drinks espresso from what was ready on the stove, and waits.

He pages through the plays Grantaire was reading. He could go upstairs and check on the tapes recorded in the last few hours, but this is more important. Things must be right between them, or the deception won’t work.

He refuses to watch the clock.

The wait is interminable.

Of course he watches the clock.

He can’t help thinking, in the stillness, of what Grantaire would be like in bed. He hadn’t thought much of it before, only that the proposal should be made; now he pictures the red O of Grantaire’s mouth surprised, and the kind of passion he’d bring to the act. It’s plain Grantaire’s a sensualist. Enjolras can only assume that with sex he chases every sensation to its deepest point.

Enjolras drops his head to the table.

It’s almost an hour before the door to the cellar opens inward, and he listens as Grantaire pauses in the hallway. He might be waiting for movement in the house. Enjolras obligingly sets down his cup.

It’s another few minutes before Grantaire appears.

“I’m sorry,” they say at the same time.

Grantaire, completely disheveled and eyes wide, gestures for Enjolras to go first.

“I’m sorry for my presumption,” Enjolras says. “I didn’t mean to embarrass or discomfit you.”

“But you’re not sorry for the offer?” Grantaire asks, breathless like he can’t help himself, like it wasn’t what he meant to say.

“I stand by it. I’d like to help you how I can. This case is important to me.”

“Not to ‘us,’ though.”

Enjolras doesn’t respond.

Grantaire’s shoulders slump.

“Truly. I’m sorry.” Enjolras gets up and walks toward him. This is not a position in which he ever expected to be, cajoling Grantaire into working with him again. How completely adolescent. He’s profoundly irritated with himself for putting them here, and with Grantaire for rising to the occasion. He stops a few feet from Grantaire. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

Grantaire shakes his head. He looks worn out.

Enjolras has to make this better; he needs Grantaire functioning. He’d like, he realizes, Grantaire happy. “Is there something I can do? I’d like to put things right.”

Grantaire looks at him searchingly. At last, he says, “Make me Daphne, then.”

“Not if you’re unwilling.”

He gives a strange little laugh, self-loathing, and ducks his head. “I’m hardly that.”

Enjolras can’t help pressing. “Then why the reluctance?” 

Grantaire avoids his eyes. “You don’t think we’re crossing lines?”

“I honestly believe in doing whatever’s necessary to complete a job.”

“Such service!” He’s hunched in on himself.

“Only if you want this, Grantaire. Only then.” Enjolras doesn’t try to touch him. “But I’m offering freely.”

“If this is what I can get, then,” Grantaire murmurs. “What’s there to lose?” He looks up. He looks in pain.

Enjolras wants nothing so much as to go to him, so he does. He puts a hand on Grantaire’s arm again, and Grantaire flinches in surprise. Enjolras makes himself be gentle this time. “How can I help?”

Grantaire takes a deep breath. He lets it out, and looks Enjolras right in the eyes. His are very blue. “This can’t be something you hold against me,” he says seriously. 

Enjolras shakes his head.

“You have to remember that you suggested this, that this is for the job.”

Enjolras nods.

“You have to promise that you know I’m accepting this because of the job.”

“Of course,” Enjolras says.

“So.” Grantaire’s voice twists. “Let’s go upstairs?”

Enjolras gestures for him to go first, and Grantaire nods, formal. Enjolras looks him over as they walk; Grantaire isn’t much shorter than he is, though he often acts so small. He’s got a good ass, a good frame. Enjolras knows how strong he is. Right now, he smells like sweat and holds himself unbending.

They’re halfway up the stairs when he turns. “Let me kiss you,” he says.

Enjolras reaches up for him. Grantaire bends down, only a step above. Like this, he’s a few inches taller.

He touches the back of Enjolras’s neck delicately, barely stroking it with one of his fingers. He leans in even closer, ghosts his lips along Enjolras’s cheek.

He’s not utilitarian when he kisses.

Enjolras wants all of him, now; he wants to help Grantaire, he wants to know him. This is the right thing to do, and acknowledging his own desire doesn’t change that. He gets one hand up to Grantaire’s jaw and presses at the hinge of bone. He chases Grantaire’s gasp, lets it pull him into R’s open mouth.

This is exhilarating all by itself. Enjolras wraps an arm around Grantaire to keep them steady, and Grantaire’s hands dance from Enjolras’s waist to his shoulders and back, tentative. Enjolras gives in entirely, follows the noises Grantaire is making. He kisses him firm and thorough, the back and forth of their tongues more like real fucking than some of the sex Enjolras has had. This isn’t a parody of the act; it’s every bit as filthy.

Grantaire rests a hand above Enjolras’s tailbone, solid. He starts to push more, worries Enjolras’s bottom lip and runs his tongue over it. Enjolras leans into him.

They’re both getting hard.

Grantaire pulls back just a little, a hand on Enjolras’s chest. “I’m staggered,” he says, breathing rough. “I didn’t peg you for a kisser.”

“No?”

“You’re comprehensive.”

“I’m not celibate. I also know what to do with my cock.” Grantaire’s a heady thing before him, translucent and looking like he’s finally ready to be still. Enjolras badly wants to fuck him.

Grantaire swallows. “Get naked,” he says. “I don’t care about a bed. I need to touch your skin, please.”

Enjolras pulls his shirt off quickly, but Grantaire is faster. Their pants are tricky, and they help each other balance.

The stairs are narrow and steep and uncovered wood. “The bedroom’s only a second away,” Enjolras says, but Grantaire’s already pulling him down.

“I don’t care,” he says, head thunking back as he gets Enjolras over him, as they arrange themselves so they don’t fall, as Enjolras bends to suck a mark against his collarbone. “I don’t care.”

Enjolras is crouched above him, braced on one hand. He spits on the other. When he does, Grantaire closes his eyes.

“There’s no shame in touch being important,” Enjolras says. He means it. He gets his hand around Grantaire’s cock and slowly slides it upward, twists it over the head. “We all need anchors in this work.”

“Christ,” Grantaire says into his arm. His face is turned away.

Enjolras hates it ashen like that, hates not knowing how to best please Grantaire. This friction has to hurt, the drag of his palm on Grantaire’s cock, but Grantaire doesn’t say anything. His cock is hot in Enjolras’s hand. “What do you want?”

“I want you to fuck me,” Grantaire says, and looks back at Enjolras. His cheeks are flushed. He’s arrayed across the steps, lying back on them, and it has to be horribly uncomfortable.

Enjolras finds he wants to give Grantaire everything he asks for. “I’m not fucking you without a condom,” he says.

Grantaire’s face goes blank.

“How do you know you can trust me? You don’t.”

“Right,” Grantaire says. “ _I_ don’t trust _you_.” He sounds brittle, but his cock is hard.

“Do you want this?” Enjolras asks again.

“How many fucking times are you going to make me say it? _Yes_. Fuck me.”

“Wait here,” Enjolras says, and he stands, goes upstairs, rifles through Grantaire’s top drawer until he finds the condoms and lube he knows are there. They’re stuck at the back, under wool socks it’s much too warm to wear. 

He comes back down more slowly, looking at Grantaire laid out before him. Grantaire’s inverted like this, spread out and with his face tilted up toward Enjolras. His eyes are closed. His mouth is open and he’s panting, and the hand he’s wrapped around his cock is still. He’s waiting.

Enjolras wants to tangle his fingers in Grantaire’s curls, an untamed mass that demands tribute. He kneels below him, and yanks Grantaire down until he’s secure against Enjolras.

“Can I pull your hair?” Enjolras asks.

“God, _please_.”

It’s every bit as soft as it looks, and when Enjolras tugs, Grantaire makes a noise high in his throat. Enjolras pulls with the purpose of baring Grantaire’s neck, and when he yields, Enjolras sucks a bruise where his pulse jumps. His hair is silky in Enjolras’s fist.

Enjolras uncaps the lube and starts warming it, rubbing the fingers of his left hand together, moves his right hand to the nape of Grantaire’s neck. He plays with the curls there.

“Will you lift your hips?” he asks.

Grantaire does.

Enjolras pushes a single finger into him, as slowly as he can bear, and Grantaire tosses his head, straining against Enjolras’s hand in his hair.

“Another,” he demands after a moment, and Enjolras slides two fingers in.

“How much do you want this?” Enjolras asks. “How much do you need it?” He strokes Grantaire’s side gently, but the prep is rough, he knows. Grantaire’s pushing insistently down on Enjolras’s fingers, looking for more. He gives him three fingers, and after a while teases him with the thought of a fourth, rubbing it gently against Grantaire’s rim. “Are you ready?”

“Fucking do it already.”

Enjolras pulls his fingers out and carefully rolls the condom on. He pushes in and watches Grantaire’s face for any kind of clue. R’s eyes are shut, his eyelashes ink-dark against his cheeks. He’s cradled against Enjolras, and it’s hard to get control but Enjolras tries. Grantaire is so tight around him, and he’s not talking. Enjolras presses a kiss to the crown of his head.

He thrusts faster. Grantaire is pliable, hitching back against him but without acknowledgement. His hips circle in the scant latitude Enjolras gives, his lashes a stark curve.

This is coarse and Enjolras fucks upward frustrated. Nothing’s resolved, this isn’t a stand-in for any fight, but Grantaire feels so good and finally, after Enjolras shifts a little, changes the angle, Grantaire opens his eyes again. His pretty hand is wrapped around his pretty cock, and he looks right at Enjolras as he gets himself off, a defiant blue stare, doesn’t even reach for the lube first, just goes fast and dry and looks like he wants it to hurt.

“What the fuck is your problem,” Grantaire gets out. “Why would you say yes to this? Why would you _want_ this?”

He clenches hard around Enjolras, deliberate.

“You looked like you needed touching,” Enjolras says. He wraps a hand around Grantaire’s, makes him stop for a minute. He adds lube, then he starts them moving again, slower. Their two hands together have to be a good weight, have to feel better than Grantaire punishing himself. Enjolras links his fingers with Grantaire’s, runs his thumb over the tip of Grantaire’s cock.

Grantaire comes.

Enjolras fucks into him even faster. Grantaire sits up against him, starts riding Enjolras more intently, braces his hands behind himself to keep them from falling. “Keep going,” he orders. He uses the stairs for leverage, pushes with his hands to come down harder. His head is tilted back and the line of his throat is perfect.

When Enjolras comes, it’s almost a surprise. It takes a minute for him to pull out, and when he’s tied off the condom, he lowers himself gingerly next to R.

The stairs dig into his back, but he’s pleasantly sated. This feels right, a validation. Grantaire looks more present next to him than he did this morning. Enjolras rests his hand on R’s stomach, feels his muscles jump. He runs his thumbnail lightly up the underside of Grantaire’s spent cock.

R shivers and grabs at his arm. “You have unmanned me.”

“You should unhand me, then.”

Grantaire abruptly lets go.

“Was it a fatal blow?” Enjolras stretches, lets himself feel satisfied, a job well done, rubs his heel back and forth against the edge of a step.

“Shall I respond it’s only a little death? No, too momentous for that,” and Grantaire’s mercurial face creases to a smirk, and he half-gestures at Enjolras’s cock. “ _Much_ too momentous. My weapon’s lowered.” 

Enjolras reaches for him again, caught up in magnanimity. He tries to tug Grantaire back to him, tuck them together.

Grantaire is still a minute, then turns, his manner curiously bland after what they’ve done. “I’d rather you didn’t do that,” he says carefully. “We both know this is just business.” He gets up wincing, and heads upstairs.

*

Grantaire wakes up slumped over the listening desk, a bottle by his foot. The process of remembering is like tearing strips off his skin and baring his beating heart to be laughed at. 

Enjolras had come up to find him after, had discovered Grantaire in the shower, said, “Don’t let this be awkward. I’m here for whatever you need.” They ate dinner together, talked about the Tour de France and the case over cèpes à la bordelaise. Everything was normal, but for how they’re pretending to be in love; but for how Grantaire now knows the feel of Enjolras’s cock; but for how Grantaire didn’t sleep beside Enjolras last night.

He peels himself off the desk. It’s late enough that Enjolras has already left for work, is probably already on his lunch break, and with a pang Grantaire realizes he didn’t grind the espresso beans for him.

Untouched, Grantaire was breaking down into his component molecules; now he’s breaking down for the opposite reason. Being Enjolras’s pity fuck is not the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, but it might be the worst thing he’s ever done to someone else. Just because Enjolras pretends not to have feelings doesn’t mean Grantaire can presume to entangle him in something like this; oh, what a tangled web; oh, how like Arachne he is, thinking that he could match a god.

There’s no choice. He calls Joly, who picks up on the third ring.

“Joly, I think I’ve fucked up.”

“R, you are my very favorite kumquat, and I don’t know what I’d do without you.” There’s a rustling in the background, and something that might be Musichetta singing.

“Is this a bad time?”

“We all took the day off. For reasons.” Grantaire can practically hear the waggle of Joly’s eyebrows. “We’re making a curry; Bossuet said he’d slice the potatoes, but I told him I had enough spice in my life without adding knife injuries to the list of events.”

“Ah, the humble pomme de terre.”

There’s a pause, and Joly asks, “Are you reaching for a pun?”

“Come on, you _stoop_ to earth for a potato. You _reach_ for an apple.”

“Not if you’re tall! Not if it’s low-hanging!”

“Not if you’re Enjolras,” Grantaire mutters.

“I don’t remember calling you an apple,” Joly says.

Grantaire makes an operatic gesture that there’s no one to appreciate, and in lieu of audience acknowledgement he yanks at his hair.

“Are you being dramatic again?”

“My life _is_ dramatic!”

“You’re an undercover spy shacked up with the object of your affections, with whom you’re pretending to be boyfriends – yes,” Joly is judicious, “there’s drama there.”

“Also, we fucked.”

There’s a sound like a dropped porcelain cup shattering. “ _What_?”

“Um. Yeah. That’s why I called.”

“Was it – wait. Don’t answer that. Wait, yes. Answer that.”

“Yes, it was good.”

“Okay. Yes. Relief! Imagine me punching the air right now, because I just did. Also I am giving you a post-sex high-five, because I highly doubt Enjolras did.”

“No. He didn’t.”

“That’s low. That’s underhanded. That’s –”

There’s a scuffle.

“Sugar,” Musichetta says down the line, “I am _real_ happy for you that you’re finally cutting that sexual tension, but what Joly is distinctly Not Telling You is that we’re taking today off because there was a raid last night that went wrong, so just... try not to make him punch the air anymore for a while, okay? He should avoid it.”

Grantaire’s heart stops for a minute.

“No, listen,” Joly says when Musichetta gives him back the phone, “I was in the backup car to play medic if needed – it was an op based on the info you guys sent us about the potential gun shipment to Paris – and it wasn’t that bad, I swear. It’s just a scratch. I won’t even be grave about it, and you know I can’t resist a _Romeo and Juliet_ allusion! That Harold Perrineau, wow.”

“Joly,” Grantaire says threateningly. He’s glad he’s already sitting down.

“They just,” and Joly’s voice turns serious, “seemed like they were expecting us. They had more men and guns than we thought, and they knew exactly where we were waiting. It made for a messy situation. But it’s just my arm; I’ll be fine. I match Combeferre, except that I’m going to get portraits of the vaudeville greats drawn on my cast.”

“Joly, could you name a single vaudeville great off the top of your head?”

“No, of course not! But don’t you think you should learn something new every day?”

This is not good, Grantaire thinks. This is not good _at all_.

*

“So we have a mole in our operation to catch another mole,” Enjolras says flatly.

“It might not be one. It could just be coincidence,” Grantaire offers, and pours him a glass of wine.

“Coincidence? You don’t believe in any kind of a shaping force in the universe, but you’ll grant us _coincidence_?”

“I never said I didn’t. Call me Enkidu, if you wish, and yourself the urbane warrior-king, but don’t pretend I’m such a misbegotten wretch as to have _no_ faith. You’ll not catch me under your umbrella, claiming our arcs are written by free will and trumpeting humanism, but don’t say I believe in nothing.”

Enjolras waits for more, but Grantaire settles like a tea kettle taken off the flame. “Little enough to act on it, though.”

“No; I won’t profane the temple more than my supplication already does. You’ll have to journey to Dilmun by yourself.”

It’s tiring, trying to talk to Grantaire through his constant layer of self-mockery. Sometimes it’s best to just ignore it. Enjolras takes a sip of wine and looks through the kitchen window at their twilit garden. Too bad it’s too late in the year to plant tomatoes. “I think the point,” he says eventually, “is what to do next.”

“Seek Utnaphishtim, beg advice.”

“Will you not take this seriously?”

Grantaire’s face is aggrieved. “Joly hurt, and you think I’m not?”

Enjolras just looks at him

Grantaire sucks in a deep breath. “All right. Then, without recourse to ancient Mesopotamia, I think we should – no. No, angel with a sword, that wouldn’t work, and it was my only idea.” He deflates.

Enjolras rejects all narratives made for him, whether the National Front wants him to be a statistic or Grantaire wants him to be a marble statue. He’s not a figurehead, and he has it in him to be kind. He reaches across the table and pats Grantaire’s arm.

Grantaire raises his head. Enjolras has one instant to think about R’s slender fingers tight in his hair, centering, and then Grantaire’s surged across the table and is kissing him. He starts fast and then slows down: his hand slides up Enjolras’s arm to his shoulder to his neck, cupping it, thumb resting on his jaw. His other hand finds Enjolras’s on the table and holds it. 

Enjolras hasn’t been kissed like this before, like kissing is a holy act and not a prelude. They haven’t talked about how they fucked, R’s avoided the question and Enjolras has tried to respect that, watching him worriedly, but now R’s mouth is half-open on his like they’ve kissed each other for years, like they know each other inside and out. It’s infuriating, how slow he kisses, because Enjolras wants more and Grantaire won’t give it.

When Grantaire draws back, he laughs a little, ragged. “There,” he says. “That’s what I believe in.”

Enjolras just stops himself from raising a hand to his mouth. He feels almost fuzzy around the edges, and shakes his head. Parsing Grantaire is a rocky shoal.

“You think I don’t care about my friends hurt? In this job, you want me to face forward, but I always have terror lurking not so quietly behind.”

Enjolras absolutely cannot resist. “Are you always the butt of your own jokes?”

“It’s true that I like to take a good crack at myself.”

“I’d _ask_ why, but –”

“But you’d have reached the bottom of the barrel?”

They grin at each other, smile lines crinkling around Grantaire’s eyes, and Enjolras’s phone rings.

“Any leads?” Courfeyrac asks. “We’re narrowing down our search from everyone who knew about the raid.”

“None,” Enjolras says, and finally breaks eye contact with Grantaire.

“How’s dinner theater tonight?” Jehan asks in the background, and Enjolras hears what sounds like a fight over whether to order take-away.

“Are you watching telenovelas in the office again?”

“No,” says Courfeyrac. “Just keeping up with our favorite one.”

That makes no sense, but Enjolras lets it go.

*

“So what you really want is worldwide socialist revolution?” Grantaire asks. He’s taking off his jeans; Enjolras is already lying mostly-naked on their bed. The street lamps outside are the only light.

“Yes,” Enjolras says, no hint of irony. “I want the love we bear each other codified in action; I want the oppressed raised; I want the excesses of despair to be changed into the triumph of joy.” He speaks like a hymn, like saying a prayer.

“And you’d call us all ‘comrade,’ would you?”

“If it’s good enough for Frantz Fanon, it’s good enough for me.”

“‘Come then, comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind.’”

“‘The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent, and resolute.’”

“You, prudent?”

Enjolras looks into the distance. “It is not my favorite virtue. But yes, pragmatic revolution – that is paramount.”

Grantaire’s heart skips, the silly beleaguered thing. “You frighten me,” he says, and Enjolras turns toward him, surprised. “You see horizons I can never hope to share.”

Enjolras would be enigmatic, his gaze level, but that his creed leaves him painfully bare.

“I can’t follow, even though you believe we’ll reach the other shore.”

“Come to bed, Grantaire.” Enjolras holds out his hand.

Grantaire stumbles toward him and lands heavily, kneeling above him. They stare at one another. Grantaire’s heart thumps. History has inculcated him against hope.

“Will we talk about this?” Enjolras asks, and brushes a hand against Grantaire’s cheek.

Grantaire shakes his head, turning his face into Enjolras’s palm. He can’t let Enjolras get close, but he’s too weak not to take everything Enjolras is willing to give. There’s barely a knife-edge between love and immolation, and Grantaire has never known how not to hurt himself.

“I think we should.” 

“Can we just acknowledge it’s happening, and move on?” Grantaire speaks into Enjolras’s skin.

“If that’s what you need.”

Grantaire glances up. Enjolras looks like he’s waiting for something; direction, maybe, though that’s hard to fathom. “Let me do something for you,” Grantaire says.

“All right.”

“Lie back.”

Enjolras does, and that makes it easier; Grantaire has an excuse not to look at his face.

“Lift up.” He strips Enjolras of his crimson briefs, runs his hands down Enjolras’s long legs.

Enjolras is less exposed naked than Grantaire feels clothed.

“I want to blow you,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras sits up, shocked; his eyes are wide open, his pupils huge.

“Can I?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, hoarse, and Grantaire pushes him down again gently.

“Just feel this,” he says. “Just be here with me.” 

Calling Grantaire an artist is a polite fiction, but he has studied the alchemy of light and geometry with enough reverence that he can understand the improbability of how in Enjolras the human meets the divine. He can’t capture Enjolras in his own drawings, and would not want to – too afraid, he thinks, fingers stroking Enjolras’s left knee and crooking Enjolras’s legs up, of what it would mean if he could – but he understands the great artists when he looks at him. Kehinde Wiley paints his subjects the way the street lamps illuminate Enjolras: as though the fire within calls outside light to the body. Rodin sculpted hands with the kind of veneration Enjolras deserves.

Grantaire bends his head.

“Wait,” he says suddenly, lips almost touching Enjolras’s cock. “A condom. Do you –”

“Just do it,” Enjolras says, his arm across his face, “if you trust me.”

“I trust you,” Grantaire says. He looks at Enjolras splayed before him, his reciprocal trust. He eases Enjolras’s thighs open a little more.

He wants to give Enjolras whatever he needs; poor disciple that Grantaire is, though, he doesn’t know what that is, and doubts he could give it even if he understood.

Enjolras is only half-hard, and Grantaire takes him in his mouth and sucks lightly, runs his tongue up and down Enjolras’s cock until he grows. He listens for any noise Enjolras might make, watches for any movement. Enjolras is still.

He pulls off. “You have to tell me what you want.”

“What you said,” Enjolras says, still hidden behind his arm. 

“You want my mouth?”

Enjolras nods.

Don’t go where I can’t come after you, Grantaire thinks. He strokes Enjolras slowly, mimics how Enjolras gripped him on the stairs. He rubs his thumbs in circles on Enjolras’s hips. He scratches his stubbled cheek against Enjolras’s thigh. Enjolras breathes in sharply at that.

Finally, Grantaire bends again. He works his way down Enjolras’s cock, swallows and swallows and swallows. He opens his throat.

Enjolras holds himself rigid. He’s like a soldier carved on a medieval tomb.

His quiet means Grantaire must fuck his own mouth on Enjolras, is the only one acting, exposes himself completely to Enjolras’s ridicule. This is how much I want you, Grantaire thinks, and then has to quash the thought. He’s too much in his own head, with Enjolras laid out like a statue of Eros that started as a sculpture of Christ. 

Confronted with his hauteur, Grantaire is all panic, the weight of Enjolras on his tongue an exquisite agony, almost shameful; his only retreat is into sensation, and he gives himself over to the salt taste and the ache in his jaw, how widely his mouth is stretched.

He runs a hand over Enjolras’s foot, pressed solid beside Grantaire’s knee. He’s shaken and tossed by the delicacy of Enjolras’s ankle; surely it’s too fragile to support the colossus Enjolras is. He strokes it with a single finger in time with how he moves his mouth. 

He’s almost genuflecting, bent over Enjolras to take all of him in, and still Enjolras doesn’t thrust up. Grantaire thinks of swallowing Enjolras’s come and has to press a hand to his own cock to keep himself in check. The sheets are cool against his skin.

He fucks himself on Enjolras over and over. When he runs a finger lightly behind Enjolras’s thigh, and even more lightly over his rim, he’s surprised when Enjolras comes.

Grantaire pulls back and swallows what he can before he starts to cough into his hand. It’s a waste. “Warn me next time,” he says, greatly daring, but when he looks up Enjolras only seems obdurate, not malleable clay.

“Sorry,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire shakes his head. He’s humiliated by how hard he is, revealing to Enjolras how much this means. He starts to jerk off quickly, not looking at him, anything to get his own part over and done. His hand is wet with Enjolras’s come.

He hears Enjolras spit, and then Enjolras wraps his hand around Grantaire’s again. “This is becoming a thing,” Grantaire says, somewhat hysterical.

Enjolras speeds them up. He nudges Grantaire’s hand out of the way, and now it’s just him, stroking hard and fervent.

Grantaire gasps and bucks up, and when he comes all over Enjolras’s hand, Enjolras raises it to his own mouth to taste, licking his fingers with slow consideration.

“Fuck,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras smiles like he hadn’t expected it either, though he’s nothing if not deliberate. “Thank you,” he says. He goes to clean himself up, and Grantaire flops down on the bed, completely lost.

*

“There’s a discrepancy in the account books, or at least an oddity. Thénardier’s renting a warehouse he can’t possibly need, not with all the storage space he’s got in his hotels.”

Grantaire nods. “We should capitalize on that.”

Enjolras says without thinking, “Maybe we should _socialize_ on it.”

There’s a beat. Then Grantaire throws his head back and laughs so hard tears come to his eyes. “Enjolras,” he says finally, wiping a hand over his face and still chuckling, “that was _terrible_.”

“ _We_ could socialize.”

“You are the poster-boy for socialism already,” Grantaire says. “What more could you want?”

Enjolras stops himself from saying _The joke is that we should fuck_. He wonders if his plan to ground Grantaire hasn’t backfired, now that he thinks about touching Grantaire all the time. At least Grantaire self-isolates less, doesn’t retreat to his punching bag so often. That’s a measureable success. No, now he wanders around after his showers in only a towel, lets the water bead on his chest and lets Enjolras track it with his eyes. He only initiates when pressed, but he invites touch. It’s highly distracting.

“Persiflage from you,” Grantaire continues, leaning forward with a light in his eyes. “I’d hardly think it of you, Parsifal.”

“I’m not a knight errant.”

“You’re not a troubadour, either; you were inspired by your grandmother, weren’t you? You came out of the woods to follow the heroes you admire.”

“What questions would you have me ask, then, to heal the injured king? I’m doing all that I know to do already.”

“You, equating the body of the nation with the body of a monarch!” Grantaire is a deaths’ head, his grin mocking. “Not a slip I’d have expected.”

“I’m only ever a man,” Enjolras says. He gets tired of saying it, sometimes. Grantaire’s too likely to slide into rancid self-flagellation when he gives himself the excuse by measuring the gulf between them. “And it was my mother who read me the stories of the Round Table.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes, tempestuous. 

For all that, he goes readily up to the listening room, barely dallying, and sends Paris a message about the warehouse.

That’s the surprise, Enjolras reflects; for all his irritations, Grantaire is competent. He hasn’t flubbed the job yet. Enjolras had come in expecting to carry the operation himself, and instead Grantaire is meeting him halfway.

*

“Madame Mabeuf gave me tomato cuttings today; she thinks it’s not too late to transplant them,” Enjolras says, and twists his fingers. “She also wants to know when I’m going to let you make an honest man of me.”

“Uh, never,” Grantaire says, and works himself back on Enjolras’s hand, which feels so fucking good. “Give me another finger.”

Enjolras obliges.

Grantaire pants into the crook of Enjolras’s neck and Enjolras starts to jerk him off. Grantaire manages not to slip on the shower tile.

“You could put a hand in my hair,” Enjolras says softly, barely audible over the sound of the water, and something pulls low in Grantaire’s belly.

When they get out, there’s a message waiting: when the strike team arrived at the warehouse, it was in flames.

*

Enjolras smiles to himself, slicing pears to bring into the parlor. Excluding Thénardier’s frightening insider – and even, he thinks wryly, putting aside the sex – this has been a nearly decent experience. There’s a kind of friendship between himself and Grantaire now, or at least an accord. They’re getting to know each other. Grantaire is an enticingly responsive partner, out of bed as well as in it. Enjolras puts some brie on the platter and walks down the hallway. It’s a pretty house, and the art R chose for the walls suits it.

“I think we should start by cross-referencing people from the raid and the warehouse job, sweetheart,” he says, and Grantaire flinches.

“Be careful about when you use endearments, dear leader,” he says. “There’s no one here to fool but yourself.”

Enjolras refuses to act embarrassed when they’ve been comfortable with each other, even if the word choice was inadvertent. He puts down his plate and stands in the doorway. “I trust you to tell the difference,” he says.

“Trust me, and you’ll be disappointed – and what’s a leader without any soldiers?”

“If he can’t keep their respect, he’s unfit to lead.”

“No; he’s deposed, he’s dead. And why, dear leader, would you –”

“Stop calling me that.”

Grantaire’s smile isn’t exactly malicious, but it could be close, if it tried. “You don’t want to preach to thousands? Get everyone all riled up, get the state sorted to your satisfaction?”

“I’m reforming from within,” Enjolras says stiffly, aware as always that’s a lie of omission: there are fewer chances to reform than he’d hoped, on the inside. But he’s playing the long game now. Give himself a respectable security background, and he can enter politics on an almost even footing with the sons of white patricians. “Besides, if the leaders aren’t humble, if there’s not a dialogue, it’s not a people’s revolution.”

Grantaire looks positively gleeful. “Just how much theory did they make you read in grad school?” he asks. “And when you weren’t reading it, were you all sitting around holding hands and singing folk songs?”

“True revolutionaries must perceive the revolution as an act of love,” Enjolras says. He won’t back down. He won’t.

Grantaire’s face vacillates between derision and something uncertain.

“I love the people,” Enjolras says.

“You hate them, most of the time.”

“I won’t play a demagogue for you; I know better than you do how ugly this country is.”

“But you still –”

“It’s simple,” Enjolras says. It is. “I believe in a better future. It’s incumbent on me to act.” He shrugs.

Grantaire’s face twists. “But you don’t excuse the inaction of the hopeless.”

“It doesn’t take much courage to believe in each other, not with friends like ours. How can anyone do less than follow their example?”

“‘You,’ not ‘anyone.’”

“What?”

Grantaire stands. “We both know you’re talking about me. How can _I_ be such a coward as to not believe in the future, when I have them – when I have you – to model it for me? That’s what you’re really asking.”

Enjolras shrugs again.

“I don’t trust the world with you,” Grantaire says. “I’ve read too much history for that.” He laughs, and it’s a choked sound. “So I won’t go to your funeral.”

“What?”

“You’ll die young. You’ll die in the line of duty for a country that scorns you, and you won’t get your name on the wall of heroes because we live in the shadows – or you’ll die in office, martyr to a revolution that’ll never come.” He looks directly at Enjolras then, eyes blue and ocean-wide, adrift. “Why would I want to celebrate either death? Why would I go, Enjolras? Give me a reason.”

Enjolras shakes his head. He was wrong to think he knew him; Grantaire is unfathomable.

“Christ, you expect it, don’t you? You’re a _knowing_ martyr, and you’ll still do it. You really are a piece of work.” He looks away, looks like he’s going to walk away.

“Who’ll do it if we won’t?” Enjolras asks. It’s an honest question. “You think I want to die for France? I don’t. But there are few enough fighters left, Grantaire – the left withers under Hollande’s poor excuse for a banner, and the right’s extremists wait in the wings. I don’t expect to see change, but I do expect to try to bring it in. This is one path to help me open the way.”

Grantaire pushes past Enjolras, and doesn’t even bother to slam the door on his way out.

*

The next few days are quiet. Grantaire sulks and skulks, avoiding Enjolras and tailing Thénardier’s men on extended trips. Their net is tightening, but there’s still no real proof tying Thénardier to anything actionable. Mostly, his men meet with other men in obscure inns and drink. They dress fairly well, at least; it lends the stake-outs an air of glamour, something to relieve the boredom. Every radio station his car can get is fuzzy, this far out of the way.

Grantaire’s gotten more than he’s ever dared want. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what will happen when they return to Paris and try to continue as colleagues. How will he face Enjolras in that cold office, now that he knows what Enjolras is like in his quiet moments, made up of painfully bad puns and staunch belief? How will he see Enjolras across the conference table and not think of his sigh as he comes? In truth, Grantaire should never have been allowed to see Enjolras’s every part, but Enjolras gives his all to everything. In an op like this, naturally some of his attention and some of his unexpected vulnerability must fall on Grantaire.

He bangs his head on the steering wheel in frustration. He rests his chin on his left fist, and crosses his right arm at an angle to get his phone to his left ear; isn’t yoga meant to be good for the soul? At any rate, contortion distracts him from his now-incipient headache.

“Eat oysters,” is Bossuet’s advice.

“That’s what you always say.”

“That’s because it’s always true. Bahorel would tell you to wear leather pants, but I imagine those would stand out more in Sainte-Jeanne. Anyway, oysters are just as much an aphrodisiac.”

“I don’t think Enjolras eats them,” Grantaire says, morose.

“I thought he didn’t practice?”

Grantaire sighs gustily. “He doesn’t like the taste.”

“Maybe if he’d just learn to swallow –”

Joly takes the phone. “I’m putting you on speaker, R. How are you holding up?”

“Homesick. Melancholic.” He shivers. “Possibly getting a summer cold. Bored, tired, stupid – and tired of boring you to death with my complaints, what’s more.”

Bossuet makes shushing noises at him, probably meant to be comforting.

“Is that Grantaire?” Musichetta must have just come into the room. “How’s he doing? Bossuet, why are you making encouraging faces at the phone when you know he can’t see you?”

“Bossuet is like the palette-cleansing ginger to the tightly-rolled upsettingness sushi that is a pining Grantaire,” Joly tells her.

“That’s the wrong category of food,” Grantaire says weakly.

Joly replies, briskly business, “Excuse _you_ , in this analogy you’re the cucumber.”

“Are you making a dick joke?”

“To be honest,” Joly says, “when am I not?”

The conversation is the best part of his night by far. When he gets home, Enjolras is waiting up for him in the parlor, stoic, an homage to Sparta in his bearing.

“Hi,” Grantaire says, and tries a smile.

“Where were you?” Enjolras is looking at him oddly. “Your mic was off.”

There’s a flutter of panic in Grantaire’s stomach, an almost inability not to admit _I was talking about you_. “Sorry. I forgot I’d turned it off. I was trailing Brujon, and then I was getting libations.”

“You’re empty-handed.”

“I drank everything on the way here.”

“You’re not drunk.” Enjolras cocks his head. “Really. Where were you?”

“It’s none of your business,” Grantaire manages to say. Sooner or later, he’s going to blurt out how he feels, and then they’ll have to confront it; the truth is itching under his skin every time he looks at Enjolras. The words push their way into his mouth even now.

Enjolras is closed-off, like he doesn’t want what’s he’s thinking to show on his face.

“I just... don’t want to talk about it, okay? We’re better off.” Grantaire inhales fear and exhales rancor, can feel his body knitting itself into a fighting stance.

Enjolras says nothing.

“If we were doing this for real, you could ask me,” Grantaire says. “But we’re not.”

*

Enjolras genuinely loves Bastille Day. At home the fireworks are usually enough for him, and he doesn’t follow his friends to the firemen’s parties, doesn’t dance until the late hours to celebrate, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it any less than they. Like any national day it’s a day nationalists can make their own, but he refuses to cede it: it’s fundamentally meant to commemorate citizens tearing down a bulwark of the unjust state. That’s worth a few fireworks.

Here, the ceremony is small, but he drags Grantaire to it anyway. It’s an evening vigil, and the mayor lays a wreath on Saint-Jeanne’s war memorial. One of the local teenagers gives a moving rendition of “La Marsaillese.” He thinks she’s mostly in tune; Grantaire barely winces, tucked by Enjolras’s side. It’s sparsely attended, and the mayor’s speech is pedantic, but Enjolras is glad they go. Civic participation is a duty as much as a privilege.

Grantaire teases him about it as they walk home. “Are you the kind of person who cries at that scene in _Casablanca_? I bet you are, aren’t you? I can just see it, tiny Enjolras singing along with that café of miscreants.” He sighs dreamily.

“Victor Lazlo was very brave,” Enjolras tells him, straight faced.

Grantaire turns to him, delighted. “You had a crush on him, didn’t you? So stalwart and principled.”

Enjolras shrugs and cracks a grin. “I liked Rick just as much. He finds his idealism, in the end.”

Grantaire looks thoughtful. Eventually, he asks, “Isn’t this all a bit much for you?” His gesture takes in the bunting on every lamppost.

“I can love a country for its potential even while I decry its sins,” Enjolras says. “The Commune held the banner of revolution even if most of the country’s bourgeoisie didn’t understand. Before the state divided the students from the people, we had a chance in ’68 for real change.”

“You really believe that.”

“I celebrate _them_ today, not the state. ‘To arms, citizens.’”

“The song also tells us that ‘against us tyranny’s bloody standard is raised,’ and it’ll be _you_ doing the bleeding, Enjolras. It was your grandparents doing the bleeding.”

“Don’t tell me how to feel about my family.” Enjolras is sharp. “I know why my grandmother fought; I was born in France, and I want to fight for the same things here.”

“By working for the security service?”

“By doing as much as I can, always. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Probably not,” Grantaire says, a self-deprecating smile taking in all he thinks he is. “But then, I never pretended to care.” It’s violet under his eyes, and the downward bow of his mouth gives him away. His corrosive abnegation of responsibility is something Enjolras will never understand, but especially not when it clearly hurts so much. It’s like Grantaire sees a yawning pit and perforce throws himself in, because he can’t imagine a future where he fights to stay upright.

“No, you’ve been honest about that.”

“No lamentations, my friend,” Grantaire says, and links their arms, steers them away from another argument. “Let us be tremendously merry, even gay, while we yet can. Indeed, let the doors of the palaces be thrown open! The Americans are in some ways to be admired; Andrew Jackson gave everyone access to cheese, an appropriate framing of equality, and a step more refined than mere bread, though of course let us not forget that it was not brie, nor that ‘everyone’ meant ‘white men.’ Let us celebrate the storming of the Bastille by storming the National Assembly; we should all be members, and all embrace one another – as more than brothers, if you take my meaning. Let us raise our glasses, and our other instruments, to Bacchus. Let us drink.”

“Are we friends, then?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire’s face shutters. “You know what I mean.”

“Rarely.” Grantaire pulls away, and Enjolras pulls him back. “But I’d like to.”

Grantaire is a puzzle. He’s been committed to the assignment, but he decries field work. He must have been motivated by _something_ to make him do so well, Enjolras thinks, but he can’t figure out what. It’s obviously not France; it could be the department, their friends, but how can he know, when Grantaire won’t open?

Grantaire starts singing ‘Ça Ira’ under his breath.

“You are all art and no matter,” Enjolras says, poking him in the side.

“It’s no matter at all to change,” says Grantaire, and they reach their little street. “I am usually all words, unless I’ve something stopping them; a _cork_ ’s for the mouth of a wine bottle, and I am most likely to pry it out, but my own mouth is readily stopped by... well. _You_ know.” He leers.

“A bottle?” Enjolras asks, dry.

“I’d be happy to show you a different face, if I had one, but as I have not – more’s the pity – I can only offer to entertain you in other ways.”

Enjolras looks at his proud little geraniums, turned to the sun. He can see that they are beautiful for themselves, but he discards that; he likes them for their rioting color, for their bravery. They look right framing the entry to the house.

“Please,” he says, and pushes open the door, “entertain me.”

“What would you like?” Grantaire asks. 

They pause in the parlor, where they’ve fucked a few times, always Grantaire eager, always Grantaire receiving, and Enjolras wants to draw him out. It’s been a long time since he trusted someone so much; he doesn’t now, but Grantaire should feel he does. “I’d like you to fuck me,” he says.

Grantaire’s eyebrows climb. “Is that something you usually do?”

“Sometimes. It’s egalitarian.”

“That’s not reason enough, if you don’t like it; honestly, I thought you didn’t.”

“I do.” He lets Grantaire draw his own conclusions about trust, and lets him draw them up to the bedroom. Grantaire starts humming ‘Ça Ira’ again on the way, and Enjolras pinches him on the stairs.

They stop next to the bed, and Grantaire’s expression changes. His hands hover at the hem of Enjolras’s shirt. “Are you sure you want this? It’s unexpected. Are you sure?”

“Save your dramatics. They’re ineffectual. Besides,” he looks Grantaire up and down, “I’m hardly scared of you.”

“I’m not dramatic; rather, priapic. And don’t insult my cock, please. I intend you to enjoy this.” Despite his bluster, Grantaire’s eyelashes sweep his cheek, his head turned.

Enjolras absolutely wants to kiss him. “I thought you said you’d be quiet.”

“Oh, are we doing this just to shut me up? I might almost take offense, if I weren’t so busy wanting you.”

“Then do something about it,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire pulls Enjolras’s shirt off and shoves him on the bed. “All right then.”

Enjolras watches Grantaire get naked. It’s a good show. “I should have asked whether _you_ minded,” he says.

“My tastes are catholic.”

Enjolras unbuttons his trousers and starts to push them down. “Catholic?”

“I like all things, and not least gilded ceremony.” Grantaire’s gaze is heavy as he regards Enjolras. He fists his cock, thick and flushed, curved upward.

Enjolras swallows. “Are we back to saints and pedestals?”

“You’d allow no gilt on you, nor do you need it, but I have too much guilt in me not to by my worship debase you, so it probably comes to the same thing in the end. We all do, and it’s a sorry one.”

Enjolras drops his trousers on the floor. “Come to bed before you dig into a funeral speech, at least. The ground’s colder than I am.”

Grantaire shakes himself, and when he looks up again his eyes are bright. “Is it harder, though?”

“Come here and find out.” Enjolras doesn’t ask about R’s guilt. That’s for later.

Grantaire nods, resolute, and kneels between Enjolras’s legs. He obligingly spreads them wider.

He’s propped up on his elbows to see what R does, but when Grantaire leans forward to kiss him, Enjolras closes his eyes. Grantaire’s mouth is so warm. His lips are chapped, but he’s gentle; there’s barely any pressure at all as he kisses down the side of Enjolras’s neck.

“Oh, the hallowed hollow of your throat,” Grantaire murmurs into his skin, and presses two fingers there so carefully. “Will you lay back?” Enjolras does; all the weight in the world seems concentrated in Grantaire’s touch, a brand against him, and Enjolras shivers. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“How would you like me?” Grantaire asks, running a hand up Enjolras’s thigh and barely skimming his cock.

It takes a while to find the words. “However you’d like.”

There’s a pause, and then Grantaire bites Enjolras’s hip, very lightly. “Be still,” he says against the mark. His voice has gone low and husky.

Grantaire kisses Enjolras’s cock, starts slowly stroking it with one hand, root to tip, rhythmic. Enjolras breathes in time. He means to be measuring Grantaire in this moment, finding what he’s made of, but it’s difficult to do anything but be present in his body.

Grantaire’s in no hurry. He pushes Enjolras’s left leg up gradually, achingly slow, until his foot rests against his ass. Then, instead of doing anything – Enjolras’s breath quickens, he loses the pattern – Grantaire just rests his fingers at the crease of Enjolras’s ass, just holding him. They’re just _there_ , warm and dry, and Enjolras is so impatient waiting for the real thing to start. Very slowly Grantaire starts running a finger, still dry, down the crease and over his rim. He rubs it with an almost exaggerated patience, like he’d be happy to do nothing but this. Eventually he adds lube, but still he doesn’t shove in.

“Breathe with me,” he says softly, and Enjolras sucks in a lungful of air.

“Come on,” he says, “come _on_.”

Grantaire pushes just one slim finger into Enjolras. He stops stroking Enjolras’s dick, just holding it at the base.

Enjolras forces his eyes open, and he sees Grantaire looking straight at him, face reverent. Grantaire blinks rapidly, and before Enjolras can say anything, R bends down and opens his mouth.

Enjolras’s breath catches.

Grantaire adds a second finger, and they stay like that awhile, Grantaire pushing in and out with the same rhythm with which he’s working up and down Enjolras’s cock. He’s still holding it steadily, tightly, and Enjolras is glad, in the small part of his mind that’s coherent. He wants this to last. He tries not to move his hips. Grantaire keeps going deeper, bobbing faster, swallowing like he loves it.

It’s eons until he pulls off. “Another finger?” he asks casually, though his voice is rough.

“Please,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire noses along Enjolras’s hip, and his thumb makes small circles against Enjolras’s shaft. Enjolras feels burnished by the attention, polished, distracted. This almost feels like being adored.

“Please,” he says again. “I want your cock.”

Grantaire laughs a little, hitching. “Mouthy,” he says, “but I’d not change you for the world.” He pulls his hand free and Enjolras draws his right leg up. He waits. He’s pliant, languorous, on fire.

Grantaire rolls a condom on, slicks himself with lube, but he doesn’t leave Enjolras bereft; he keeps a knee nudged against Enjolras’s foot, mooring.

Enjolras counts his breaths in and out, and then Grantaire pushes in.

Enjolras exhales. 

Grantaire waits, just the head of his cock inside Enjolras, letting him adjust, and then continues so slowly it’s agonizing.

When they’re flush, Grantaire holds himself still again, but he’s shuddering a little. Enjolras brushes a thumb along Grantaire’s jaw, and Grantaire kisses it. “Tell me if I do anything you don’t like,” he says.

He begins to thrust, and he starts jerking Enjolras off with the same cadence. There’s a strange joy in this, in the fullness of Grantaire inside him, and it’s almost shocking. Enjolras pushes back against him, trying to take him deeper. 

Enjolras is breathless, mouth open. R leans down and kisses him. The change in angle sparks something in Enjolras, and he chases it. Warmth spreads through him. Things start to go quiet in his head, and he’s caught in the feeling of Grantaire inside him and over him, covering him. They’re panting against each other, and Grantaire twists a hand in Enjolras’s hair. He palms Enjolras’s cock and bites his collarbone. He’s as inexorable as the tide.

He comes, face pressed tight into the join of Enjolras’s shoulder. He doesn’t stop moving his hand, doesn’t slow down, and Enjolras comes on an upstroke, breathing hard.

Grantaire pulls out carefully and rolls off, deals with the condom, puts some distance between them.

Enjolras doesn’t look at him.

“Happy Bastille Day,” Grantaire says after a few minutes, into the quiet. “A better way of celebrating than most have had. Worth more celebration than the holiday, anyway.”

Enjolras doesn’t reply, and Grantaire turns on his side, facing away. This is a release, but it’s not a bridge between them.

He lays awake absently feeling the mark on his skin and thinking about how little Grantaire has ever really stood for a cause. Tomorrow is a Tuesday and Enjolras will be back in the office, not here with R. He wonders what Grantaire will do alone all day with no eyes on him, whom he’ll talk to in the village.

He doesn’t sleep.

*

Enjolras’s key turns in the lock but Grantaire doesn’t get up to greet him. He’s curled on the loveseat in the parlor, reading through old mission reports and biting his thumbnail. There are a number of agents common to each operation Thénardier helped with, and any of them could be the mole now, but he’d have said all of them were trustworthy. He’d have bet his life on it. He _is_ betting his life on it – not much of a stake, maybe, but the idea of one of their own selling them out is still painful.

“I’m in here,” he calls absently.

Enjolras leans heavily on the doorframe. When Grantaire looks up, his face is wan, and there’s a kind of chiaroscuro in the lines of his face. His mouth is tight.

“Bad day?” Grantaire asks.

“I’ve been thinking about who’s most likely to be the leak,” Enjolras says. He doesn’t sit, and Grantaire’s neck starts to hurt at the angle. Enjolras is so tall.

“I have a list of those of his old contacts who also know about our op, but it’s not good news. Though I believe in little enough,” he pulls a face for Enjolras’s amusement, but Enjolras doesn’t acknowledge it, “I’d have thought these men would stay true.”

“It’s hurtful,” Enjolras says.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have expected more, but I really thought... Well, that doesn’t matter now. What do you want to do next? How shall we proceed, my captain?”

Enjolras straightens a little, more a Michelangelo now than a Rodin. He’s all clean lines, nothing impressionist about him, more marble than Grantaire has ever seen another human look. His hands rest by his sides. “I want to confront him.”

Grantaire sits up, and the papers on his lap fall to the floor. “You know who it is, then?”

The way Enjolras looks at him makes Grantaire want to shrink in on himself. He’s spent the last seven weeks trying to live outside Enjolras’s shadow, pretending to full partnership, but now he remembers why that was such a bad idea. Enjolras towers. “Do you have anything you want to say?” he asks.

“I’m sorry I haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Are you still playing?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t exactly call it that – I’m _trying_ , at least.” Grantaire gestures at the papers, stung.

“I think it could be you.”

Grantaire stops breathing. “What?”

Enjolras comes into the room and crouches down so they’re eye-to-eye. “I’d been trying to think about who has access to our operation and cares so much about Thénardier as to give his men the information, but then I wondered if it wasn’t instead a problem of who cares so _little_.”

Grantaire’s hands are trembling so hard he has to grip his knees. It’s adrenaline, he thinks numbly. Fight or flight.

“You’ve done so much better on this job than you have in the past, and I thought maybe it was that you were changing for the better, finding something to believe in. But you keep disclaiming faith, Grantaire. What else am I supposed to think, but that you’d sell us all for a little extra money?”

Grantaire can’t answer, words caught in his throat. Horror calcifies him.

Enjolras leans forward. He rests his hands over Grantaire’s. “Please give me something else to think,” he says, and his voice is desperate. “ _Please_.”

It almost sounds like when he was begging Grantaire to fuck him.

“I believe in you,” Grantaire says quietly.

“What?”

“I believe in you, that’s why I was trying. I wanted to impress you.” Grantaire throws off Enjolras’s hands. “Was that what you were thinking about three days ago?” He stands, tries to get around Enjolras.

Enjolras rises to block him. “Grantaire,” he says, “I don’t want to believe it.”

“But you _do_.” Grantaire doesn’t even know why he’s so surprised. What else did he expect? Of course Enjolras wasn’t going to trust him. A few meals together, a few blowjobs, a few civil conversations wouldn’t be enough to change that.

Enjolras searches his face. “I was trying to find the weak link in the chain, and when I thought about your past –”

Grantaire dashes an angry hand over his eyes. “Right, I’m the weak link. My past means I’m susceptible to bribes. Have you never had a nightmare, Enjolras? Are you so merciless that you think it’s shameful?”

“I meant the sex, Grantaire.”

Grantaire rocks back. “The _sex_?”

“You’ve always been more moved by people than by a cause. You seek out pleasure like you can’t control yourself.” He’s calm and measured again, a counterpoint to the rapid staccato of Grantaire’s heart. “Your need to indulge leaves you vulnerable, and you leave us vulnerable. How many times have you come into work unprepared to focus because you picked someone up the night before?”

Grantaire is shocked silent.

“I offered to sleep with you because I thought it would keep you from looking in more unsavory places. I know what you need, and I wanted to give it.” His tone changes, hardens. “I thought it would keep you from destroying the mission. But why would you be satisfied with me, when we’ve never been civil before? When I put aside my pride, I could see that you still wanted something else, that I wasn’t enough – and then you wouldn’t tell me where you were the other night.”

Grantaire tries to move past Enjolras. He’s numb, and he stumbles.

Enjolras catches him with a hand at his elbow. “You’re inconsistent.” He says it right into Grantaire’s face, burning. “How can I possibly trust you? You don’t have your usual outlets, only me. How do I know what Thénardier promised? How do I know you weren’t feckless, that you didn’t jump at the chance to get what you want? How can I _know_?” His fingers tighten.

“You sanctimonious asshole.” Grantaire finds his voice. “You promised you wouldn’t hold that against me. I said yes because _you asked_.” There’s a revulsion rising in him, the desperate need to be out of his skin.

“I asked because I thought you were going to go to pieces.” Enjolras steps back, pointedly giving Grantaire space to leave, daring him to take it.

Grantaire’s hands are still shaking. “I was controlling it.”

“Not well.”

“I wasn’t looking for... for a good _fucking_ , Enjolras. I have nightmares because the last undercover mission I was on went bad.” There’s fear in Grantaire’s throat. “I asked for a desk job because it went bad, which is incidentally also why I don’t trust myself in the field.”

“With good reason, it seems.”

“Jesus.”

Enjolras crosses his arms. “What about Combeferre? How do you explain that failure?”

“What?”

“He was shot while unconscious. Why weren’t you guarding him better?”

Grantaire closes his eyes, readies for a blow. “I shot him.”

Nothing happens.

He opens his eyes, and Enjolras has stepped back. Shock is all over his face. Now’s Grantaire’s chance to run, if he wants. He doesn’t.

There’s a hollow in his chest, but at least his hands are finally still.

“Why?”

“We were cornered, and Combeferre was unconscious at my feet. They told me I could go free if I’d let them have him. It was a game to them.” Grantaire’s voice is dull. The words are inevitable, now, but telling is a punishment. He’s flaying himself for Enjolras’s inspection, exposing all his worst parts. “I knew they were lying, that they wouldn’t let me go, but I wanted to get my hands on a gun. I asked if they’d let me shoot him rather than do it themselves, said something about honor and brotherhood, and the leader gave me a gun with one bullet left. I lifted Combeferre and embraced him, like I was really going to do it.”

“And then?”

“I held him how I wanted, and then I shot the leader through Combeferre’s arm.”

“Why didn’t you just angle around him?”

“They all had guns trained on us. I needed the shock of killing the leader to distract them. It was a close thing, even so.” Grantaire wavers. He’s exhausted, he realizes, bone-weary and sick with disappointment, and with shame that he thought this would end any other way.

He waits for whatever judgment Enjolras will pass.

“Grantaire,” he says at last, “I want to believe you, but how can I? You are incapable of doing more in the moment than you must. You disgrace us with your flippancy; that’s all I’ve seen for the past eighteen months. I had come to think better of you, these last weeks, but I might have been fooled.”

“So you’ll truss me up and wait for a tumbrel to take me to Paris?”

Enjolras’s face is grave. On anyone else, Grantaire would call his expression wracked. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to believe.”

They breathe in tandem.

“If you’d trusted me, I’d have followed you. I was ready to follow even if you didn’t, so long as you didn’t scorn me, but now –” Grantaire shrugs. “Be easy,” he says. “I’m not your burden anymore.” He walks out the door.

*

Watching Grantaire leave is a motif of their weeks together, and Enjolras wonders for a moment if that’s what being with R would be like in real life too.

In the next instant, he’s slammed with the image of Grantaire standing by the stove and holding out a wooden spoon for Enjolras to taste, “My mother’s recipe for soupe au pistou. You’ll like it, I think. I used tomatoes from the garden.” It’s almost enough to make Enjolras go after him.

He sits on the floor instead, and rests his head on his knees.

If Grantaire is the mole, then he’s misjudged him, and Grantaire’s betrayed all their friends as well as their country. Joly, Bossuet, Bahorel, Courfeyrac – they’ll be devastated, and Fantine will be stricken to have created the situation. He has no proof yet, but if he finds it, this won’t end well.

If Grantaire isn’t the mole, then he’s also misjudged him. Enjolras thinks of Grantaire’s pale wounded face, and all the apologies to be made.

He should call Paris immediately, tell them his suspicions, but there’s a muscular loneliness in his hands, a strange ache. He waits.

*

Grantaire wakes to his head throbbing, and to his arms and legs tied to a sturdy chair.

His first thought is that the department believes Enjolras, and he’s being held for questioning. His second, squinting into the dark around him, is that he’s been captured.

He takes the news with as much equanimity as he can, given the pain in his head and the fear in his blood; it almost feels fitting, after the fight with Enjolras, after Enjolras renounced him, that he should find himself in another circle of hell.

Can you renounce something you’ve never claimed? There’s no light at all, but he can smell damp in the air, and he can hear something dripping.

The ropes won’t give, and his limbs are numb. He tries to shift, and can’t; the chair must be bolted to the floor. There’s a foul-tasting gag in his mouth, so he can’t even scream. 

He struggles anyway, much longer than it takes to realize there’s no escape.

Not again. Please, not again.

As the hours tick past and he listens to the water trickle down in whatever cellar they’ve got him in, he knows that no one’s coming to save him. He sits, listening to the water, waiting out the time his captors are giving to mess with his head, waiting out the time until they realize there won’t be a rescue attempt, that he’s not a valuable commodity.

He’d laugh, but he’s worried he wouldn’t be able to stop. The two things he’s feared most about field work, and he’s met them both: Enjolras, and torture.

He can remember his skin being touched, a kind of silhouette of being held, like it happened to someone else a lifetime ago. He knows he won’t be touched again, or at least not kindly.

His wrists ache, bound so tightly together.

No one is coming for him. It’s nothing more than he ever expected. His head droops. For now, his body’s gone numb, and he drifts. 

He has no illusions about his own strength.

He thinks about his favorite art, pictures Klimt and Chagall and Laurencin, golden pastorals and exuberant skies and unhurried people. He thinks of Enjolras, surprisingly human, tucked into blankets and snoring. He thinks of what he’d do with Enjolras on a Parisian Saturday in August, the kind of thoughts he’s never let himself have before: they’d walk by the Seine, and go to the Orangerie, and hold hands. Surely it can’t be too profane to find comfort in the idea, in this moment; they parted horribly, and Enjolras disdains him, but he doesn’t think Enjolras would begrudge him the fiction if he needs it.

He needs it.

*

“Grantaire’s missing.”

Courfeyrac breathes in sharply. “What do you mean?”

“We had a fight, and he left. That was six hours ago, and he’s missed every check-in since. His mic’s not on. He’s turned it off before, but never for so long.” Enjolras pauses. “I’m concerned,” he admits. His pulse is a drumbeat. If Grantaire ran –

“I’ll get our local people to you,” Courfeyrac says. “And some of us will come down straight away.” His voice is pinched.

Courfeyrac doesn’t have an easy job, Enjolras thinks, listening to the static between them and trying to distract himself; as operations control, Courfeyrac holds everything together, in small ways and large. “Who’ll come?” Enjolras asks.

“I will, Combeferre, Joly, Bossuet – Bahorel’s back. So you’ll have two field agents, and logistics and support.”

Enjolras winds his finger around the fringe of the deep red rug in the front parlor. He’s been waiting here a long time. “What if he’s gone to ground?”

“What?”

“There are three options.” Enjolras breathes steadily, centers himself. “One: he’s out drinking, angry about our fight. It’s certainly possible, but I think unlikely. He’s been very professional thus far.” He doesn’t think of Grantaire mouthing his skin. “Two: he’s been discovered by Thénardier. Also unlikely. If he’s moved against Grantaire, why not against me? I’m the one who works for him. I have the most dangerous knowledge about his business. Three: he’s the leak, and he knows I suspect, and he’s fled.”

There’s a long silence, but for keys typing. Finally, Courfeyrac says, “I’m sending you everything I’ve got from the tracker in his cell phone. It hasn’t moved from the same spot on the motorway for four hours.” He sounds bleak.

“I should check the village,” Enjolras says, “the bars and the pubs, but I don’t want to leave.” ‘Just in case’ goes unspoken.

“I’m on my way,” Courfeyrac says, and Enjolras is left with dead air. He strokes a thumb over his collarbone, again and again.

By the time three extremely discreet local inspectors have shown up at his door, and Courfeyrac’s sent him an ETA, he’s pulled himself together and made a list of all the sites Grantaire has talked about in the south, and found the documents on all the properties Thénardier owns in the region. He doesn’t think about the way the house feels empty. He will not give in to panic. He will not give in to fear.

He has never been so glad for the way Courfeyrac hugs. “I have to ask you about the fight,” he says as soon as he’s in the door, hours later, not yet dawn, face pressed into Enjolras’s shoulder and arms around him. Joly sets up equipment and pretends not to listen.

“I told him what I thought,” Enjolras says.

“How did he take it?” Combeferre asks, voice low. He’s drifted to join them, unobtrusive. Bahorel and Bossuet talk to the local detectives.

“He was surprised, at first.” Shocked, and then resigned.

Courfeyrac takes him by the arms and peers at him. “Enjolras, I love you as my brother and I trust your judgment.” Beside him, Combeferre nods. “If you think there’s a reason to doubt R, I _must_ believe you. I know what he’s like, and I know what _you’re_ like. But he’s also my friend, and I would have said I knew him.”

Their trust is overwhelming. Everything is, between the three of them – so steady and glowing that if he ever sits and thinks about it, he feels buoyant. Everything Enjolras will ever accomplish is because of and with these two men.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Combeferre leans in too. “Enjolras –”

“I _don’t know_ ,” he tells them, “and _you_ don’t know R, I don’t think, not how he’s been these past weeks. He cares, or at least he tries.”

Courfeyrac’s hands flex. “And you thought it was because he serves another master?”

“No. Yes. I – has he _ever_ served with us?” Enjolras laughs wildly. “It put me on my guard. But he could also be lying in a ditch somewhere, drunk.”

“Dead drunk,” Joly says, giving up on pretense. “Or simply dead.”

“We have to go over every seam. We _have_ to find him today.”

Joly nods. He’s a glad heart Enjolras is proud to call a friend, usually calm in a crisis, but now he’s gray. “I know you don’t trust him,” he says to their little group. “I can even understand it, if I try, if I put his taunting above his intent, and oh, I’m not trying to excuse his excesses, nor should we. But I trust him entirely, and I think he’s in trouble.”

This is why there should not be more to Enjolras than his work. If he extends too far – he has an abrupt and absurd recollection of coaxing tiny tendrils onto trellises in the garden, and thinks that he must be overtired – he will make too many wrong choices.

“In the drug operation, he was tortured,” Joly continues quietly. “I would like us to spare him that, if we can.”

*

Grantaire realizes, head hanging low and aching, that he can name one place he would rather be even less than watching Enjolras righteous and expecting Grantaire to be too: it’s here, as Thénardier’s crew warms up. So far they’ve just used their fists, but he knows tools are coming. Gueulemer has made sure he knows, laying them out to catch the dull light of a lantern. All Thénardier’s men are here, circling. Montparnasse bares his teeth.

Grantaire’s sins have come home to roost, or he’s lined the road to his own personal hell with half-decent intentions – if he’s going to resort to tired metaphor, he might as well pick the one most reminiscent of Enjolras’s beloved cobblestones, weapons apparently against the self as well as against the state. Grantaire grins, and the cut on his lip widens.

To think he thought he might catch the real mole, and bring him in triumph to Enjolras. Call Grantaire ‘Prometheus,’ and let an eagle eat his liver for his hubris. Bringing the fire of truth is more in Enjolras’s line. Instead, the real mole has caught _him_.

“What are you smiling at?” asks Le Cabuc.

Grantaire raises his head, an obliging target. Predictably, Le Cabuc backhands him. The cut on Grantaire’s lip widens more. “Just thinking that you couldn’t be a more laughable bunch of villains if you tried,” he says. “I’ve a dim view of humanity as it is, but you make a case for even dimmer; treachery’s one thing, and I expect it, but treachery by _idiots_? That’s an affront.”

Le Cabuc is a large man, and his slap makes Grantaire’s head ring. “Watch who you’re calling an idiot,” he says. “You won’t be laughing long.”

“I’d say I call it like I see it, but really, you’re an utter stranger to me,” Grantaire says. He pretends his heart’s not a rabbit in his chest. The last time he saw this man was months ago, an inter-departmental meeting.

“I shouldn’t be, with the number of times we’ve drunk together,” says Le Cabuc. “But maybe you were sleeping on the job.”

“Sleeping _with_ the job, more like,” laughs Gueulemer, who is not so witty as he thinks. Grantaire tries to make a fist even though his hands have gone numb, something to keep himself from flinching.

“I only mean the idea of you as the mole is surprising,” Grantaire says, hoping in the part of him that used to pray that his voice will not waver. “You are of little consequence, Le Cabuc, but we thought you our fellow. You’re a discredit to the service.”

Le Cabuc punches him in the stomach. “There!” he says, and makes as if to drop his pistol to the ground and tackle Grantaire. 

“Now, now,” says Thénardier, and steps out of the shadows. He clearly loves the dramatic entrance, but he is the inverse of Enjolras: coming into the light does not make him seem towering. It makes him small.

What would Enjolras do in this moment? Grantaire would try to spit at Thénardier, but his mouth is too dry. Any bile he could muster would only land back on himself. He’s spent beyond the telling, just ready for this to be over. How is it, he wonders, that he already craves Enjolras’s hands so much that the prospect of dying without feeling them again sears?

He screws his scant courage to the sticking place. “So boring, torture, isn’t it? We all know where it’ll end.” He closes his mind to the nightmare memories.

Thénardier laughs. “You think the torture’s begun? Hardly, my boy. By the time we’re done here, you’ll have told us everything we want to know. I could probably retire on the profits you’ll make me.”

“I know little enough,” Grantaire says. He thinks his palms are sweating. “The drunken sot, that wasn’t an act.”

“Hm.” Thénardier comes closer. He moves like a particularly vile snake. “And Enjolras? I doubt that was an act either.” His smile is like a skull.

“Enjolras? I hate him.”

“I don’t think you do. Dumb adoration, that’s more your line. Like a beast.”

Panicked horror coils in Grantaire.

“It would be so unfortunate if something were to happen to him, don’t you think? If he had to go through this too. Much simpler just to tell us everything you know – start with current operations, then we’ll move on – and spare him the bother.”

Grantaire thinks of Enjolras here, in this dank pit, and then he thinks of Enjolras’s strength, his immutability, the hope that makes him human. He laughs loudly in Thénardier’s face. “You’d never make him talk,” he says. “Never. You’d be running yourself into a marble wall.”

“A pity,” says Thénardier. “Well, we shall just have to make the best use of you that we can.” He gestures to Montparnasse, who picks up a wickedly curved knife. “I suppose we’d best send him some memento to remember you by.” 

“Why bother? He won’t care.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

Gueulemer holds Grantaire still, and Montparnasse cuts off a lock of his hair. He holds it up to Grantaire’s face, smirking.

“I rather think that will get Enjolras’s attention,” Thénardier says. “He certainly liked petting it well enough.”

“It doesn’t matter. He won’t be coming.”

“Maybe not, and maybe even if he did we wouldn’t learn anything from him. But you can’t blame a man for trying.”

“I’m sure I could,” Grantaire starts to say, but Thénardier holds up the gag. Grantaire’s abruptly glad. It’ll prevent him from screaming. He would like, in this moment, not to embarrass Enjolras. Last time this happened, he was very loud.

“I’ll remove it periodically, see if you’re ready to talk,” Thénardier says. “For now, just a little taste, to show you I mean business. Do you understand?”

Grantaire’s never been able to resist an opening. “You always mean business. Capitalist scum, that’s you. See, they think I’m not one of them, but –”

The gag’s in his mouth before he can finish. It’s probably just as well, he thinks philosophically, drawing inward as the pain starts. He’s declared himself for Enjolras enough times that his friends probably know the truth of his feelings, but to affirm their politics only at death is surely a kind of cowardice. In embracing desolation faith leaps forth, yes, he can do it in this moment, but to bear the grief of faith while living is not a courage he –

Grantaire makes a noise against the gag, and closes his eyes rather than look at Montparnasse. He tries to find the thoughts he’d lined up to not be in his body, goes in his head to the Orangerie and a picnic in the gardens, how Enjolras had looked in bed in the early mornings asleep, how he had sounded when he laughed.

“Will you talk now?” Thénardier asks.

Grantaire shakes his head.

The pain is its own kind of release, relentless.

No one is going to rescue him. He came to terms with that long ago.

He lets himself fade into black.

*

“Lamarque doesn’t want us closing the ports, or even sending border agents Grantaire’s picture. Until we know if he’s the mole, we have to keep his identity secret, in case R does more field work in the future.”

“He’ll need a future, for that.”

“We all do, and we have to think of what’s best for the department,” Combeferre says.

Joly turns away. He won’t even entertain the possibility that Grantaire’s been bought, and Enjolras could almost wish for that same unshakeable certainty, if it didn’t mean leaving the department open to attack. If he could trust Grantaire, he would know his friends safe, but in the absence of trust, he has to consider all possibilities.

He goes to make more espresso. They all need it.

He hasn’t had to grind his own coffee for a long time.

Enjolras is staring at the stove, waiting for the pot to boil, when Bahorel comes and leans against the counter beside him.

“You’re heartsick,” he says bluntly.

Enjolras shakes his head. There’s only the job. There’s only finding Grantaire.

“Enjolras, you’ve lived with him for two months, you’ve known him practically two years. He’s missing. It’s all right to feel that.”

“I can’t,” Enjolras says. He carefully watches steam rise from the espresso maker.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Enjolras says nothing.

“We’re hindered by not knowing if we’re gearing up for a rescue –”

“Don’t you think I’m torn too? Either he’s sold us out, or we’ve abandoned him to torture and death.” Enjolras’s voice is quiet. He pours coffee into a tiny porcelain cup. “Don’t you think I wish I could trust him?”

“What’s stopping you?”

He turns and hands the cup to Bahorel. It’s dwarfed in his large palm. “He’s failed us before.”

“Enjolras, we’ve all failed before.”

“I know.”

Bahorel sighs. “I met a girl on mission. A woman. She has the most amazing laugh.” It’s an offering, a chance to talk about something else, and Enjolras doesn’t know if he’s grateful or annoyed. He thinks of Grantaire chuckling warm into his skin.

“You like her?”

“You could say that. I think she might have also been trying to kill me – those thighs alone are lethal! – but we had some good nights. And mornings. And afternoons.” He shivers, exaggerated. “There’s a dead drop in the 13ème where I can reach her.”

“Bahorel, is she a foreign spy?”

“Why so scandalized?” Bahorel grins.

“But –”

“Don’t worry. It’s not like we were doing much _talking_ , even if I was working my tongue.”

The doorbell rings, and there’s a sick roll in Enjolras’s stomach.

“Do you want to get that?” Bahorel’s face is stone.

Enjolras nods.

When he eases the door open, gun cocked, there’s no one on the street. A small envelope lies on the front step. He looks inside, and has to take a moment to breathe deeply.

Behind him, there’s a sort of tumult; Joly and Bossuet have found Grantaire’s apricot jam, and are spreading it on croissants to pass around. Courfeyrac is making friendly conversation with the local officers. Enjolras presses his hand to his mouth.

Protocol does not dictate a rescue. Grantaire may have been grabbed, but the investigation is still ongoing, and there’s a chance that Enjolras’s cover is yet intact. If Grantaire doesn’t break, and Thénardier thinks he’s made an error... 

Enjolras imagines months of playing the grieving boyfriend to a disappeared Grantaire. He imagines Grantaire trying to resist whatever they’re doing to him.

He turns around. “They’ve got him.”

There’s a sudden lull.

Enjolras hands Bahorel the envelope. “There’s a photo, and some of his hair. They want a ransom wired to Switzerland.”

Bahorel pulls the picture out gently. It’s a polaroid of Grantaire slumped forward in a chair, probably unconscious. He’s been bound and badly beaten.

“How do you know he’s not faking this too?” Combeferre asks.

That’s an easy answer. Enjolras’s heart is in his throat, beating like a ticking clock. This proves Grantaire innocent. “He wouldn’t be so cruel. He might betray France because he doesn’t care about the cause, but he’d never be this deliberately unkind to his friends.” Grantaire’s ready friendliness has always been the truest thing about him, the hardest thing to doubt. They need to act.

“So what do we do?” It’s one of the locals. Her voice is determined.

“They’ll kill him whether or not we send the money, and you know the government won’t pay. Let’s get him,” Joly says.

Urgency thrums in Enjolras.

Bahorel stretches his arms, an instant menace. “I love a good rescue operation.”

Combeferre nudges Enjolras. “This will have to be entirely off the books, you know.”

Enjolras tries to focus on Combeferre’s face. “I’ll save him myself. I’m not asking anyone to do what I won’t. I’m not asking anyone to help.” Shame isn’t a familiar emotion, but it pulses through him. He imagines Grantaire trying to save them all by uncharacteristic silence. In the photo, there is blood at his mouth.

Combeferre raises his voice for the room. “This won’t be a sanctioned operation, not with Enjolras’s cover possibly undetected. Anyone uncomfortable with contravening Lamarque should feel free to leave.”

“You’re both idiots,” Bossuet says kindly. His face is white but his gaze steady.

“We don’t abandon comrades-in-arms,” Bahorel says, “nor friends.”

Courfeyrac grabs the picture from him and begins a rapid-fire consultation with the locals, who look uneasy but tenacious.

Combeferre draws Enjolras aside. “If rescuing Grantaire means compromising the mission, is he worth it?” he asks lowly.

Loving the future means loving his friends. “He is to me,” Enjolras says.

*

He is awake and all he wants is to be let to sleep, to dream he is in Sainte-Jeanne or Paris and not this nowhere space. They throw water on him when he passes out, but they don’t give him any to drink. 

He’s not sure, in the more lucid moments when he can articulate where and why he is, whether this is better or worse than when the drug ring had him. He thinks it hurt less then, and he cared more about surviving; now it hurts more, but it matters less.

It’s all very fuzzy. Grantaire’s not clear on where the pain starts and where he ends. He thinks it might be the same place. His head drops.

There’s a loud sound, and what might be shouting, but he’s had so much shouting today that he can hardly bring himself to look. The reprieve is nice, but of course reprieves make the next round worse.

He’d give almost anything for a drink of water. It’s lucky they haven’t tried to tempt him with that. Or have they? He can’t remember.

More loud sounds. Guns? He doesn’t think they’ve shot him. He tries to open his eyes to check, but the room is burning and it’s so bright. There’s a silhouette, and it looks to be holding a sword. The Archangel Michael held a sword, in the painting in the small country church where Grantaire grew up. The Archangel Michael held a sword and he came to fight evil and save the people, lit by holy fire. Grantaire used to stare at the painting when his mother took him to mass. Michael was pure, remote. He didn’t look like Grantaire was someone he’d save.

Now, Michael’s wings waver. Grantaire thinks there might be smoke in the room. Someone – Le Cabuc? – shouts for mercy, and there’s another loud sound.

Michael comes closer. His face looks cold and his hair disheveled. His shirt is ripped at the neck. He stands in front of Grantaire and pulls the gag from his mouth.

Grantaire coughs and coughs, and then, “What were you thinking?” he asks. “Why would you come?”

Michael stares down at him. The angle makes Grantaire’s neck hurt.

Grantaire is angry. “Why would you come?” he asks again.

Enjolras kneels before him and tilts Grantaire’s chin up with two gentle fingers. He looks Grantaire in the eye. “I couldn’t let them hurt you.”

“I don’t have any money for Charon. There was no one to mourn and leave it,” Grantaire tries to explain, distantly proud of how clear the words are. He feels very far off.

Enjolras doesn’t seem worried about the money. “I’m glad you waited for me,” he says, and starts to cut through Grantaire’s bindings. Other shapes are moving behind him, maybe other people. He’s got something red on his sleeve.

Grantaire’s last sight is of his implacable face before Grantaire collapses forward into his arms.

He’s not there when Grantaire wakes up.

It’s a slow process. Grantaire becomes conscious of the ache in his body, which means he’s probably not dead, and the ache in his head, which is a reminder that he almost was. He becomes conscious of the whirr of machines, and a brightness around him, and an all-consuming thirst.

When he opens his eyes, it’s to see Joly sitting in a chair beside his bed looking determinedly not worried, and Bossuet lounging seductively against the clinically white wall, eating cheese.

Grantaire feels a little hazy, is hooked up to something with an IV in his arm and is probably drugged, but he’s pretty sure Enjolras isn’t in the room.

“I can smell your brie, L’aigle,” he says. “Why don’t you fly over here and give me some?”

“And you croaking like a crow?” Joly asks. He tuts and helps Grantaire sit up. He holds a plastic cup to Grantaire’s mouth with a hand that trembles a little, but maybe that’s just that Grantaire’s eyes are suddenly blurry.

“Do you have a hole in your stomach?” Bossuet asks, and Grantaire keeps drinking.

Eventually, he leans back from Joly, and coughs, and says, “Why don’t you tell me?”

“You’re in a hospital, obviously, and you’re going to be _fine_.” Joly’s firm, and he comes to sit on the bed. He carefully helps Grantaire get as comfortable as possible, which mostly involves shuffling him very gently until he’s nearly sprawled in Joly’s lap. It’s a familiar dance. “You’ve got more bruises then Bossuet on a bad day, including a couple bruised ribs; some burns and cuts; and you were so dehydrated –”

“R, you weren’t even that dehydrated in our student days,” Bossuet says. “I don’t think.”

That explains the IV. Grantaire closes his eyes and nestles into Joly, which hurts. Everything hurts. “Were you all in on it?”

“Yes. It wasn’t exactly official, but everyone knew about it.”

“Will you get in trouble?”

“No,” Bossuet says. “Paris is as silent as a cloister, and _not_ one of those that brews beer.”

“Don’t let’s talk of monks.” Grantaire can still see Enjolras behind his eyelids.

“All right.” Bossuet’s voice is gentle, and he slips out to go tell the others Grantaire’s alive, or something. Grantaire just keeps leaning against Joly and breathing as evenly as he can.

“I need a distraction,” he says eventually.

Joly thoughtfully starts relating gossip from Paris. Apparently Marius is in love, which they agree is abhorrent. Musichetta has taken extremely well to another new pair of trousers Joly bought on Bahorel’s recommendation. Courfeyrac has an extravagant hat. It’s all very soothing, until Joly decides Grantaire’s been coddled enough. “Oh, and Bossuet ran into Irma the other day, who is looking as well as ever and frankly doesn’t seem to miss you; she likes her new girlfriend very much. And I almost completely forgot, the hospital put your clothes aside for me to throw away, and it’s such a shame because that was one of your favorite shirts, but did you know there was a bleach spot on it? Enjolras is a laundry _menace_ , and you can’t let him get away with that in the future.” He waits expectantly.

“I have literally nothing to offer him,” Grantaire says.

Joly strokes a hand through his hair. “It’s always struck me that your ideas of a relationship are particularly one-sided. You spend a lot of time calculating what other people receive from being with you.”

Grantaire nods. He’s got a con-artist heart. It’s a tricky thing, making people like him.

“I think maybe it’s time you realized that people might love you for what _they_ can give _you_. For what you can be together.”

“We can’t be anything together. We can’t even sustain a lie very well.”

“Are you sure it was a lie?”

“It’s not fair to demand he love me back,” Grantaire says softly.

“No, of course not. But I think it’s fair to give him a chance to decide for himself.”

Grantaire smiles weakly. “There’s a joke to be made there about how in this case the house won’t win, but I can’t really find it.”

“A man without puns is a sad tomato indeed,” Joly says, cuddling Grantaire closer and kindly letting the subject turn.

“You might almost call him unripe for conversation.”

“Green at the gills?” Joly brushes Grantaire’s hair back from his forehead again. It feels nice.

“Hey, organic tomatoes only. No splicing fish genes into the DNA. Just tasting bitter.”

“Hey,” Joly parrots, and shakes Grantaire’s head against his chest with care, “we will always love you, no matter how green your flesh.”

“What if I were a zombie?” Grantaire can’t help himself; he grins a little bit.

“Even then, my little lebkuchen.”

“That’s not a fruit.”

“Clearly you’ve retained your mental faculties.”

There’s a throat cleared behind them, and Joly maneuvers them around until Grantaire can quirk his head up and blink against the light at Lamarque. “Lebkuchen?” he asks, one bushy white brow raised perfectly. Grantaire has a moment of desperate envy. 

“Grantaire is no ordinary cabbage,” Joly says. That feels nice too.

*

Enjolras is impatient. He’s waiting on the brink, and he hates waiting. The doctors have put a sling on his arm and sent him on his way, and he’s been yelled at by Lamarque who came down from Paris just for the opportunity, and he’s responded in kind, and he’s debriefed his team and written a report, and now he paces the hallway outside Grantaire’s room. Joly has a prior claim, that’s understandable, but Enjolras would like his turn. There’s an apology owed, not for trying to keep the department safe, but for his mistrust.

The fluorescent lights are flickering and humming. It’s an annoyance.

Finally, Joly comes out. “Be good to each other,” he says amiably, seriously. “And he's tired; you’re his fourth visitor today. Bossuet was here before you, and Lamarque.” He holds the door open for Enjolras.

Grantaire is lying on the bed, half propped by half a dozen pillows like in moving he’ll shatter. Enjolras knows now the truth, which is that he won’t. He’s as stalwart as they come, when he cares to be.

“You look like hell,” Enjolras says.

“Nothing new.” Grantaire’s eyes flick up to him. They’re so blue in his pale face – pale but for the enormous livid bruise across his cheek, nastily yellow and violet. “You’re injured.”

“Nothing serious. Montparnasse’s knife.”

There’s a pause.

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Enjolras says.

“You had good reason.” 

Enjolras comes closer. “I mean it. These past months you’ve shown your mettle many times; even if you hadn’t, I should have known you wouldn’t hurt our friends.”

Grantaire looks uncomfortable. “If I say I forgive you, can we drop it? You didn’t do this to me, and you didn’t think any worse of me than I deserve.”

Enjolras stands at the end of the bed. They can look at each other directly this way, and Grantaire won’t have to turn his neck. “I know I didn’t do it to you. These are the risks we all take in this job. I still regret that they hurt you, and I regret that _I_ hurt you.”

Grantaire’s silent. He doesn’t deny it.

“Joly told me that it’s happened before.”

“I don’t like pain,” Grantaire says. His eyes are shadowed by his long lashes. “I fear it.”

“You fight all the time. Martial arts, boxing.”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse. It’s different to control the manner in which you’re hurt.” His voice is colorless. “Sometimes the fighting helps me build walls.”

“Did it help here?”

“Not for very long. I didn’t want to let them hurt me; I’m a libertine, not an ascetic. But I didn’t tell them anything.”

Enjolras breathes out. His hands relax.

Grantaire looks at him quickly. “Didn’t expect that? Well, I didn’t do it for you. It was for everyone.”

Enjolras nods. “When it happened before, what happened?”

“One night I was playing cello for Joly and Bossuet’s band in a bar. I knew them from university, and we came into the service together. Some of the men I was undercover with saw me. They thought the cello was incongruous, and they had some questions.” He sounds exhausted. “That’s so stupid. You can be in both worlds, but they disagreed; it got the wind up for them about other oddities. My team got me out eventually. Bossuet suggested I transfer.” 

“I’m glad.” Enjolras smiles. He thinks of taking R to the top of the Institut du Monde Arabe, out to the high terrace, and showing him the view of their city. It might be one of the few paces in Paris he can reveal something new to Grantaire. There are things Grantaire might be willing to show him, an exchange; he thinks of Grantaire in a museum in a dark corner, stripped, because Enjolras doesn’t care about art but he cares about Grantaire lit by his passions. The imagined contrast between cold bronze and living flesh is electric. “You liked to cook for me,” he says, and comes to sit in the chair next to the bed.

“I was going to make you a mourtairol, funeral meats to furnish our marriage table.”

“Not a real marriage.” Enjolras covers Grantaire’s hand with his own.

“No. Not a real marriage.” Grantaire draws away, unhappy. “Enjolras, I love you.”

“What?”

His eyelashes fan his cheek. “I love you.”

“What?”

“You heard.”

Shock becomes horror. “For how long?”

Grantaire turns to look at him. “Love is caring for someone for all their parts, and it took me a while to see you’re human. That was a facet of you I couldn’t countenance. I love you, but I’ve wanted you for longer.”

“How could you let me fuck you when I didn’t know it meant something to you?” 

“I thought you knew,” R says tiredly. “I thought you knew and were being nice. Well, at first I thought you were being cruel, and pretending to be nice about it.”

“How can you think that of me and say you love me?” Enjolras pulls his hand back from the bed and grips the arm of his chair, staring at Grantaire. His throat aches.

“I was near you and found it unbearable.” He doesn’t look away from Enjolras now. “I thought it was the most you’d ever give me, and I was grateful for it.”

“The most I’d ever give?” They’d grown closer; they’d become something like friends, before the risk of the mole. Enjolras had hoped. “Were you using me?”

“I don’t think so,” Grantaire says. “Not for more than you told me I should, for comfort and touch. I wasn’t making up stories in my head that we’d be together. Loving you was enough. Loving you on my own, no reciprocity, had to be enough. You don’t owe that to anyone.”

“No, but I think I could come to love you,” Enjolras says slowly, and it’s true, something gold unfurling in him. Grantaire is possibilities. “I think I want to.”

Grantaire makes a sound, distressed.

“You’re easy to love. No, keep looking at me.” He leans forward and tilts Grantaire’s chin up, looks into those deep blue eyes soberly. Grantaire blinks, still trying to hide. “You bluster and you prod, and that’s all you see of yourself. But I see more. You’re a good person.”

“I love your sense of duty,” Grantaire manages, clearly an effort, “but I don’t love you for it. Please don’t do this because you feel beholden.” He makes some half-committed gesture, encompasses his own bravery. “Another few minutes, and they’d have had me.”

“No, they wouldn’t.”

Grantaire is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “No, they wouldn’t.”

Enjolras takes his hand again and kisses him.

*

They go back to Sainte-Jeanne to pack up their things and to part from the house. Grantaire doesn’t really let himself dream the future in which they buy it for themselves, in which there’s more than a little grey in Enjolras’s hair and he’s a statesman, in which Grantaire hasn’t chased him off, but for now it’s enough that the next few hours will be spent together putting away their false lives. 

This is better than the lies were. Their silences now are of a different kind, and if Grantaire tries very hard, he can believe in what they might mean.

He’s boxing up the kitchen when he finds a large jar tucked in a cupboard, the prunes he set to soak in Armagnac a month ago. “Enjolras?” he calls.

Enjolras comes in from the living room, a copy of Freire in his hand. “Did we always have so many books?”

Grantaire grins. “No.”

“We’ll need to say goodbye to Madame Mabeuf and Madame Simplice before we go.”

“And maybe give them a warning that they might be called to testify?”

“It would be appropriate.” The last three weeks have been a mix of the utter boredom of the hospital and a whirlwind of work; there will be trials, and the villagers will probably be involved. Thénardier and his gang, including Le Cabuc, are going away for a long time.

Or at least as long as it takes for them to buy their way out, Grantaire thinks. It won’t really be long at all.

Enjolras shot Le Cabuc – or Claquesous, Grantaire should call him now, his real name – while Grantaire thought him Michael, but he fired only to disarm. “I thought he’d killed you, but I couldn’t kill him,” Enjolras had said to Grantaire on that first day, seated in the hospital chair with the face of a man condemned. “I wanted to, and that’s why I couldn’t. Murder by the state... Monsters will disappear only if we guard against them in ourselves.”

“I know,” Grantaire had said, still holding his hand. “God, Enjolras, did you think I’d be angry? I’d have to be a murderer too for that, and love you for less than you are.”

He hasn’t stopped saying it, can’t stop now that Enjolras lets him. Maybe someday Enjolras will say it back. For now, they try this new gentleness between them.

“Would you like a prune?” Grantaire asks. “I think they’ll be good. Gascony at its finest.”

“Please.”

Grantaire gets two small glasses out of a box he’s just packed, and puts a prune in each. He adds a generous amount of brandy from the jar, and hands one to Enjolras. “À votre santé,” he says formally.

“Et à la tienne,” Enjolras corrects. He does this often, methodically opening his life to Grantaire with purpose. He takes Grantaire’s jokes and turns them into invitations to an intimacy that’s richer by far than the imitation of it they lived.

Grantaire can’t always face him afterwards. This is still too much, some days.

Enjolras draws him into the parlor and they sit cross-legged on the wooden floor. Most of the furniture’s been moved out already, a company hired by Courfeyrac to return to the service its assets, but they’re responsible for their own things and the smaller pieces. Enjolras looks at him searchingly.

He tosses back his brandy and sets his glass down. If he could create with the kind of turbulent joy that made Matisse’s cut-outs, maybe then he could express what Enjolras is like.

“We should say a proper goodbye to the house too,” Enjolras says.

“Sentimentalist.”

Enjolras is dark plains and sea green eyes, that smile that can’t resist a pun. “Maybe,” he allows, “and maybe I just want an excuse to get you naked.”

These are the parts of Enjolras that make him whole and human, the ones Grantaire couldn’t see before. He takes off his shirt and waits. “Well?”

Enjolras takes off his shirt too, his torso making Grantaire itch for charcoal and a sketchbook, the bare honesty of Singer Sargent’s nudes. “Well?”

“Please let me draw you sometime,” Grantaire says. “I don’t think I can, but I want to try.”

“Only if you take off your pants.”

His playfulness is hard to resist, and Grantaire starts humming ‘Ça Ira’ as he stands up and unbuttons his jeans.

Enjolras laughs.

Grantaire looks down at him. “What? I thought you’d appreciate it for stripping music.”

“I love it,” Enjolras says. “And it makes me think of last time.” He doesn’t sound wistful, but there’s something delicate in his voice.

Grantaire will give him anything he asks. He kneels over him and brushes Enjolras’s hands away, unbuckles his belt for him and slowly pulls it through the loops. He unzips Enjolras’s fly.

“What would you like?” Enjolras asks.

“I would very much like to go down on you and feel you go hard while you’re in my mouth, but that’s a little impractical right now.”

Enjolras is already hard, unselfconscious about it, and as he leans back to lift his hips and let Grantaire pull his trousers off his long legs, he says, “There’s always tomorrow.” He sounds fond. “Or later tonight.”

It’s only just twilight outside, the lavender of the sky lighting the parlor like a half-remembered glory. They’ve left the curtains pulled back, and though they’re sat beneath the lintel and probably out of sight, what does it matter if someone sees them now? Enjolras is spread out before Grantaire and waiting.

Grantaire has only ever been made luminous by his love of beauty, the reflected holiness worn by an unworthy acolyte, and Enjolras now is like the Barberini Faun, his lovingly, perfectly sculpted cock a hymn. He’s like the flesh Bernini made of stone, untouchable but calling to be caressed. He’s like Michelangelo’s slaves escaping from the rock, unfinished figures meant to gild a pope’s tomb but instead lining the hall to the David. They presage what is to come. Their toil foresees the best of humanism. Grantaire has always preferred them to the worry in David’s eyes and to his unblemished skin; they’re stronger, hewing themselves out of their marble prisons instead of watching Goliath approach.

“Do you know anything about sculpture?” he asks Enjolras, leaning in to nose along his shoulder.

Enjolras arches his neck. “Only what we learned in history classes. It never seemed important.”

“There’s very little that better shows the human need for sensuality.” He runs a palm down Enjolras’s chest. Enjolras is so warm. “The ecstasy on the face of a Bernini, or on the face of the Faun in Munich, they give us a human means of triumph.”

“We give each other the means,” Enjolras says. He ducks his head and starts pressing open-mouthed kisses to Grantaire’s jaw. He moves up, bites carefully at Grantaire’s earlobe, and asks, hot breath damp on Grantaire’s skin, “Will you fuck me again?”

Grantaire pulls back.

Enjolras’s face is soft. “I liked it more than I thought I would.”

Grantaire nods. He’s sure his eyes are round. “Yeah.” His voice is rough. Enjolras is never less than forthright, but Grantaire is still surprised to be given his honesty.

Enjolras leans back on his elbows, waiting patiently for Grantaire to move so he can part his legs. His proud mouth is soft too when Grantaire slides his thumb in, and he sucks on it gently. When Grantaire pulls it out and rubs Enjolras’s own spit back onto his lips, he leaves them shiny.

Grantaire crooks Enjolras’s legs and pushes his thighs farther apart. He drags his thumbnail around Enjolras’s rim, and Enjolras watches him unwaveringly. “There’s lube in my pocket,” Enjolras says. “I’d rather you didn’t use a condom.”

When Grantaire’s fingers are slick and he pushes one in, Enjolras’s mouth falls open, just a little. Grantaire fucks him slowly, only the one finger, until Enjolras’s head is thrown back and he’s baring the strong column of his neck. His body is a bow.

Grantaire adds a second finger, starts gently stretching, and Enjolras makes noises that Grantaire thinks could never be transcribed. He’s so tight, and he wants this so much. He rocks back against Grantaire’s fingers not insistent, not demanding, but like it’s instinct. The sky is blue-violet outside the windows.

Sweat rolls down Grantaire’s back. “Are you ready?”

“Please,” Enjolras says. He hasn’t touched himself but his cock is flushed and there’s pre-come on his belly.

Grantaire bends to lick it up, and then he pushes in. Enjolras’s face is serene, transcendent; if he weren’t hot around Grantaire it would be hard to believe this not a dream. Grantaire is inadequate and yearning, and Enjolras is faith unshakeable.

His cock feels so good in Grantaire’s hand. Grantaire gives Enjolras a finger, something to suck on as he jerks Enjolras off. He strokes Enjolras’s tongue, the salt taste of his hand meant for a tether. He fucks Enjolras deeply, tries to give him a steady rhythm. He wants to draw this out, to do everything Enjolras might like; Enjolras’s mouth opens on a gasp, and Grantaire pushes a second finger in.

Enjolras rolls his hips against Grantaire, takes his cock deeper. They converge. Enjolras is resplendent, no one’s artwork but his own, a glow to his skin in the gathering shadows. 

He’s breathless and arching. When he opens his eyes and looks at Grantaire, they’re full of a twined compassion and ecstasy. “Please,” he says. There’s a fine tremor in his arms. He catches the light.

“Let go,” Grantaire says. “I’ve got you. Trust me.”

Enjolras pushes against him again and arcs up, coming across Grantaire’s hand. Grantaire bends to try and catch his mouth, and then he sets his face to Enjolras’s shoulder and fucks him harder, faster, tries to read in this too what Enjolras wants.

When he comes, he stays deep, breathing harshly. After a while, Enjolras pets his hair.

Grantaire pulls out slowly, and makes to get up, get a towel, but Enjolras grabs his hand. “Don’t go anywhere yet,” he says quietly, and when Grantaire lies beside him, Enjolras turns into Grantaire. He hitches his thigh up and brings Grantaire’s hand down and back, makes a kind of question noise. Grantaire pushes his fingers gently back into Enjolras, feels his own come. He strokes Enjolras with his thumb.

Eventually Enjolras moves and Grantaire draws his hand away, but they stay pressed together. Enjolras raises Grantaire’s hand to his lips and kisses his palm. 

In another few minutes they’ll get up and clean themselves, and later still they’ll sleep on the mattress left upstairs. Tomorrow they return to Paris.

“Sweetheart,” Enjolras says, deliberate.

Grantaire smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> The sexculottes are [Ark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark)'s, the sushi analogy is [idiopathicsmile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/idiopathicsmile)'s, and Joly’s speech about laundry is [twofrontteethstillcrooked](http://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked)'s.
> 
> People wanted to know references! Grantaire’s, in order: [Ganymede](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_\(mythology\)), [Renoir](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoir#Artworks), the [selling of lilies of the valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_of_the_valley#Symbolic_uses) in France on May 1 (countering the [royal emblem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis#France_Modern)), [Tantalus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus#Story_of_Tantalus), [Yo-Yo Ma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uEC6vKtOFE), [Madame Defarge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Defarge), [Jean Anouilh](http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/beauty_is_one_of_the_rare_things_that_do_not_lead/184335.html), [Hamlet’s speech about worms](http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_222.html), [Daphne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne), [Arachne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne#Ovid.27s_Version), [_The Epic of Gilgamesh_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh#Tablet_one), [Wiley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehinde_Wiley#Art), Rodin’s [hands](https://www.google.com/search?q=rodin+hands&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ZdPKU872FpPcoATI9ICgBQ&ved=0CBwQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=643), [Eros](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros), [Percival](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival#Fictional_background), [a scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM) from _Casablanca_ , [Andrew Jackson’s cheese](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crackpots_and_These_Women#The_Cheshire_Mammoth_Cheese), [Bacchus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchus#Bacchus_and_the_Bacchanalia), “[Ça Ira](http://barricadeur.tumblr.com/post/91784094468/barricadeur-edith-piaf-ah-ca-ira-french),” [Priapus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus), [Klimt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_\(Klimt\)), [Chagall](http://www.marcchagallart.net/chagall-277.php), [Laurencin](http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/pages/page_id19466_u1l2.htm), the [Orangerie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_de_l%27Orangerie), [Prometheus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus#Hesiod_and_the_Theogony), the [Archangel Michael](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archangel_Michael_in_Christian_art), [paying Charon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol), the [mourtairol tradition](http://platefodder.com/2010/11/19/saffron-mourtairol-comfort-for-the-soul), [Hamlet’s speech about funeral meat](http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_30.html), Matisse’s [cut outs](http://www.henri-matisse.net/cut_outs.html), [Singer Sargent](http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-singer-sargent/male-nudes-wrestling), the [Barberini Faun](http://cciv214fa2012.site.wesleyan.edu/hellenistic-period/tumblr_m9qmiq1elm1ruq5t7o1_500) (of which there are even [cock shots](http://durand-digitalgallery.com/2011/photography/sculpture/barberini-faun-glyptothek/barberini-faun-21)), and [Bernini](https://www.google.com/search?q=bernini+eroticism&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=suLKU_6gHIiBogT1joCABA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643). Probably the most important reference he makes: [Michelangelo](http://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-prisoners-slaves).
> 
> Enjolras references the [history of _Liberty Leading the People_](http://barricadeur.tumblr.com/post/58642127364/so-eugene-delacroixs-liberty-leading-the-people), the [FLN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War#The_FLN), [Mercutio's accusation of Romeo](http://nfs.sparknotes.com/romeojuliet/page_144.html), [Frantz Fanon](https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/conclusion.htm), [Paulo Freire](http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/pedagogy/pedagogychapter3.html) (see footnote 4), the [Paris Commune](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune), [May 1968](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968), “[La Marseillaise](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise#Lyrics),” and the [view](http://www.gourmantic.com/2011/01/13/views-of-paris-from-the-institut-du-monde-arabe) from the Institut du Monde Arabe.
> 
> THAT’S A LOT OF LINKS SORRY
> 
> The title is from Bree Sharp’s seminal “[David Duchovny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-WOLvyyZ-A).”


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